As an addendum to my last blog entry, the Criterion Collection announced today it will release Ozu’s silent A Story of Floating Weeds (1934) and his sound remake, Floating Weeds (1959), together as a 2-disc DVD in April. Coming on the heels of Ikiru, The Rules of the Game, and Diary of a Country Priest, Criterion is definitely starting 2004 with a bang.

Details will include:

Disc One: A Story of Floating Weeds

ïNew high-definition digital transfer with restored image and sound
ïAudio commentary by Japanese film historian Donald Richie
ïNew score by noted silent-film composer Donald Sosin
ïNew and improved English subtitle translation by Donald Richie
ïOptimal image quality: RSDL dual-layer edition

Disc Two: Floating Weeds

ïNew high-definition digital transfer with restored image and sound
ïAudio commentary by film critic Roger Ebert
ïOriginal theatrical trailer
ïNew and improved English subtitle translation by Donald Richie
ïOptimal image quality: RSDL dual-layer edition

One of the best writers on film today, James Quandt, hasn’t authored any book-length studies I’m aware of–although he has edited several definitive compilations–and one of my dreams is that he’ll manage to compile his own writing into such a book someday soon. As the Senior Programmer for the CinÈmathËque Ontario, one can catch his fleeting essays on their website from time to time, but there doesn’t seem to be any archive for preserving this writing for posterity.

It’s a shame, because Quandt’s ability to balance a love of poetic language with precise and knowledgeable description makes him a consistently enjoyable read, as can be seen in his latest essay posted in conjunction with the CinÈmathËque’s Yasujiro Ozu retrospective:

The scrim of reverence that has enshrouded certain directors, particularly those considered spiritual or visionary–Dreyer, Bresson, Tarkovsky, Brakhage are obvious examples–has veiled or obscured many aspects of their work. Political, sexual, or psychological readings of their films have been regarded as tantamount to blasphemy, a besmirchment or distortion of pure and inviolable texts. So too Ozu, venerated as a “transcendental” artist, whose international fame has long rested on a half dozen of his (mostly late) films: muted, minimalist home dramas, esteemed for their “eternal verities” about family, death, transience, tradition; for their poignancy, Zen serenity and quiet sense of resignation–subsumed in the concept of mono no aware or “sensitivity to things”; and for their delicacy, restraint, and formal rigour.

Itís pointless to deny these qualities in Ozuís work or that the late films are sublimeñ-atmospherically, with their limpid, summery calm; formally, with their low-slung, symmetrical and stationary compositions, cut straight and punctuated by gorgeously extraneous “pillow shots” or disorienting ellipses; and emotionally, with their roiling undercurrents of disappointment and smiling despair. But their decorous sense of dissolution has too often been mistaken for Zen transcendentalism and probity, and in the process much of what comprises the Ozu universe has been ignored or suppressed. (As Donald Richie notes above, Ozu himself downplayed the miscellany of his career.) Booze, brats, and boxing figure in Ozuís work, as do gangsters and prostitutes, scatology and fetishism, dragnet girls, femmes fatales and gun-wielding wives. Crime films and proto-noirs, neorealist narratives and melodramas, vulgar comedies and knockabout student satires (of the subgenre known as “erotic-grotesque-nonsense”)-ñall influenced by Hollywood cinema (Lubitsch, Lloyd, Sternberg)-ñstipple Ozuís prewar filmography. Unlike the evenly lit, statically shot, and abruptly cut late films, the earlier works feature chiaroscuro, virtuoso camera movement, and fluent transitions; many are so movie-mad that their overt references to Ozuís beloved directors (through homage or citation) make him occasionally seem like an erstwhile Godard.

You can read the full essay, here.

I’ve always been a proponent of using movies to initiate dialogue in public forums and I’m lucky enough to live in a city that does this with some regularity. A couple of nights ago, I had the pleasure of attending a benefit screening and discussion of Salt of the Earth, a 1954 blacklisted film depicting a miner’s strike, and the proceeds went to two unions representing the 71,000 grocery workers currently on strike in Southern California.

For readers unfamiliar with current events in the Golden State, there is a significant crisis in the grocery industry that serves as a microcosm of larger economic woes in the US. Earlier last year, Wal-Mart announced it will build 40 grocery Supercenters in California over the next three to five years. Wal-Mart, of course, is the largest corporation on earth–its roughly $220 billion annual sales is equivalent to the gross national product of Sweden. Keys to its financial success have been its non-union, low-wage workforce and underselling its competitors by any means necessary, forcing not only its competitors but also its suppliers to cut costs–and jobs.

After Wal-Mart’s announcement, Vons, a major Southern California grocery chain and subsidiary of Safeway, announced it would slash its employee health care benefits by fifty percent, prompting a workers’ strike on October 11th, 2003. Immediately, two other major grocery retailers, Ralph’s (a subsidiary of Kroger) and Albertson’s, decided to lock-out their employees (and hire new ones) after agreeing with Von’s that “a strike against one company would be considered a strike against all three.”

Now in its fourth month, the strike shows no signs of being resolved, even as business for these companies has been severely hampered by community boycotts in support of the workers and their families. This rare Salt of the Earth screening was co-sponsored by a number of Green Party chapters and Laemmle Theatres.

A few months ago, I reviewed All Day Entertainment’s DVD release of Christ in Concrete (1949), a movie that was made in Britain by several Hollywood filmmakers who were blacklisted in the US that was effectively shelved for decades. In some ways, Salt of the Earth is a more dramatic example of blacklist filmmaking fought in the trenches of this country. As a movie the FBI and the Hollywood industry did everything they could to destroy, it also qualifies as one of the first bona fide independent American films.

Based on a true story about a 1950-’52 strike by zinc miners in Silver City, New Mexico, the film is a rousing depiction of a community of Mexican-American workers and their efforts to demand equal rights with other (white) miners. It was financed by Local 890, the union depicted in the story, and made by one of the “Hollywood Ten” filmmakers, director Herbert J. Biberman, as well as other blacklistees: producer Paul Jarrico, composer Sol Kaplan, and writer Michael Wilson (whose credits include A Place in the Sun, Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, and Planet of the Apes).

Detailed in James J. Lorence’s 1999 book, The Suppression of Salt of the Earth: How Hollywood, Big Labor, and Politicians Blacklisted a Movie in Cold War America (as well as Biberman’s own published account), industry string-pullers such as Howard Hughes banned laboratories from processing any of Salt‘s footage or offering post-production services of any kind–initial editing was done secretly in a temporary setup in the bathroom of the still-extant Rialto Theatre in South Pasadena. (One of the several editors who abandoned the project was reportedly planted by the FBI.) The FBI also deported the film’s star, Rosaura Revueltas, midway through filming (insert footage was subsequently and illegally shot in Mexico, where political pressure succeeded in banning the film’s production there as well) and after the movie managed to be completed, the industry’s projectionists’ union refused to screen it. After a handful of theatrical engagements in New York (where it was critically well-received), the film was promptly shelved until its “rediscovery” many years later. But in a twist of history (or was it?), the Library of Congress’ Film Registry celebrated the movie forty years later through its 1992 inclusion with the most “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant [American] films.”

The filmmakers intended the movie for a mass audience, so it’s quite accessible filmmaking, wearing its emotions and values on its sleeve. In fact, seeing it today could easily provoke bewilderment from viewers familiar with the film’s tortured history: why on earth would such a seemingly straightforward and melodramatic picture be treated with such vehement opposition? Recognizing this disparity reveals the astonishing extent to which anti-communist hysteria prevailed at the time.

The movie focuses on Ramon (Juan Chacon, a real-life union leader) and Esperanza (Reveultas) Quintero, a young married couple who illustrate the human side of racial inequality as well as gender tensions. As the company and local police put the heat on the male strikers, their wives volunteer to march the picket line in their places, creating a reversal of traditional gender roles: the women stage the rallies and spend time in jail while the men stay at home, wash dishes, and take care of the children. In many ways, the film is a progressive statement for the ’50s as several of the men begin whining about their domestic chores. (The film’s distributor, Organa, offers this QuickTime scene, which illustrates the growing friction between the conservative Ramon and the progressive Esperanza.)

The film’s style is social realist, with a mixture of professional and non-professional actors. The troublesome sheriff is played by blacklistee Will Greer, who many associate with his later portrayal of the grandpa in the television show, The Waltons. The underground nature of its production guarantees some rough technical edges (the sound suffers the most, with fluxuations in quality throughout) but also places it alongside the postwar masterpieces of Italian neorealism, even if Salt is more clearly rooted in Classical Hollywood style with its strong narrative, three-point lighting, and continuity editing. It’s not a film renowned for its aesthetics–adequately wrought though they are–but a movie valued for its political stance and historical significance. More than the typical Miramax/Tarantino extravaganzas, it’s films like this that establish the historical precedent and importance of truly independent American filmmaking.

Salt of the Earth is available on VHS and DVD. National Public Radio broadcasted this story about its contemporary relevance (beyond that for Southern California grocery workers) on the occasion of its screening at a recent conference at the College of Santa Fe.

Being a child of the ’70s and ’80s, I came to cinephilia through video and therefore treasure opportunities to rewatch classic films projected on the big screen. Many of the benefits of film are notorious–increased resolution and detail, a greater range of mid-tones, projected rather than emitted light; other differences are more subtle–a soothing shutter rather than a nervous scanning frequency and a more rigid relationship between the viewer and the film (video allows a viewer to start and stop a movie at his or her own whim).

Sometimes, watching a video favorite on film can amount to a revelation, completely reinventing one’s experience and understanding of a movie–such was the case when I saw 70mm prints of Lawrence of Arabia (1964) and 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and marveled at the clarity of every pore of Peter O’Toole’s sunburned face and the details of Kubrick’s majestic universe, both obscured on video.

Now I can resolutely add Jacques Tati’s restored 70mm Playtime (1967) to my list of favorite, once-in-a-lifetime film screenings courtesy of the American Cinematheque in Hollywood last night.

I’ve had the currently out-of-print Criterion Collection DVD of Playtime for a few years, but although the film is reported to be the only French film ever made in 70mm, the DVD was created from a shortened 35mm print with mono sound. Nothing prepared me for the immersive experience of seeing the film in 70mm with 5-channel DTS, the version which premiered to much acclaim at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival. (It was recently released as a 2-disc DVD in France and Criterion is rumored to be planning a rerelease as well.) The new print, which restores Tati’s last approved cut and his English dubbing, allowed me to slip into the film’s world more fully without having to read subtitles.

And what a world it is. Tati spent roughly ten years designing a life-sized city (affectionately known as “Tativille”) complete with his own skyscraper, surrounding structures, and congested streets. In many ways, the setting is a close relative of Metropolis (1927) or Blade Runner (1982), its fictional urban landscape brilliantly representing problems of modern life through steel and glass. It was the most expensive French film ever made at the time, but paradoxically, Tati chose a rigorous, minimalist style for the film and his decision to restrict the presence of his popular screen persona, Monsieur Hulot, alienated audiences and ensured a box office disaster that precipitated many years of financial and legal difficulties.

In his whimsically written 1987 study, The Films of Jacques Tati, critic Michel Chion sums up the filmmaker’s daring approach:

Playtime is, especially in its first part, a film made through a process of elimination.

Elimination of the superfluous: bare decor, smooth, colossal. [...]

Elimination of the main hero and the plot: a perfectly circular screenplay which simply enlivens a repetitive world with discreet waves.

Elimination of traditional dramatic mechanisms: nothing to conquer; nothing to assert. [...]

Elimination of nature: not a blade of grass, not a breath of sea air is left. [...]

Elimination of Paris, although we are supposed to be there: the surviving traces of the city exist only as reflections (like ‘ideas’) on the window panes. [...]

Elimination of colours: they were bright and gaudy in Mon Oncle, here they have been sucked up by a sort of huge syringe and left only to exist as signs, position lights in an ocean of grey blue steel. [...]

Thematically, Playtime is a critique of urban alienation, but stylistically it’s a stoic comedy of strange behaviors and sounds, ludicrous technology and slapstick humor. A group of roving American tourists point to the traffic lights and exclaim, “Look, their green lights are just like our green lights!” A man on the street asks a second man for a match before he (and the viewer) realizes they are separated by a huge window–the second man is standing inside a building. A shopper carries a tall lamp onto a crowded city bus and riders mistakingly hold the lamp rather than the bus’ vertical rails. People in adjoining apartments watch offscreen television sets and appear to face one another, the camera recording the situation from outside the building like a split screen–when the man in the apartment on the left begins to undress, the woman on the right appears to watch him like a peep show.

On video it’s definitely more difficult to appreciate the film’s subtleties (but don’t let that keep you from trying) and the movie sometimes alienates viewers even today who expect a more conventional comedy. But the screening last night was positively electric, from its ticket line that extended out of the theatre and down along Hollywood Boulevard to its screening suffused with laughter and applause. Once a viewer settles into Tati’s rhythm and perspective, the film offers more aesthetic and ideological pleasures than the last 20 multiplex comedies combined.

I should also give special mention to the fun and elaborate website devoted to Tati’s films, Tativille.com. It provides a quote by the filmmaker that reflects his laudable intentions:

“What I have tried to do is something that spectators would not have anticipated because spectators are always labeling artists and saying, ‘This is the funny fellow, he’s going to make us laugh.’ But in Playtime, it’s quite the opposite, it’s an invitation: ‘Look about you and you’ll see there’s always something funny happening.’ I think that Playtime is made not so much for the screen as for the eye.”

Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers, a classic of political filmmaking from 1965, has gotten its theatrical rerelease by Rialto Pictures and reignited controversy as commentators have attempted to either establish or dispel its relation to current events. While it’s true that the film’s specific context is Algeria’s fight for independence from colonial France beginning in ’54, its riveting depiction of miltary occupation, checkpoints and curfews, terrorist insurgency, and the collective will of a people forging a national identity has undeniable contemporary relevance.

Pontecorvo once described the film as a “hymn . . . in homage to the people who must struggle for independence, not only in Algeria, but everywhere in the third world,” and his musical analogy is appropriate for two reasons: his film is more lyrical in approach than historically comprehensive and it benefits from a pounding score he helped to compose. Pontecorvo focuses on the battle in the streets of Algiers, but much of the Algerian revolution occurred in the countryside. Thus, although the French squelch the urban insurrection by ’57, the widespread Algerian will that seems to reemerge in Algiers in ’60 is merely a continuation of the revolution occurring in the napalm-emblazoned mountains and countryside. After 130 years of colonial occupation, France declared Algeria’s independence in ’62.

Filmed with a handheld camera and available light in the city’s European and Casbah sectors and employing nonprofessional actors in major roles, the film is aesthetically linked to postwar Italian neorealism. (Pontecorvo cites Roberto Rossellini’s Paisan as the single film which inspired him to become a filmmaker.) The movie’s formal energy is perhaps its most startling aspect, as riots, cafÈ bombings, and street killings erupt on the screen in seemingly random and unexpected ways while Pontecorvo’s immersive, documentary-like camerawork captures it all.

Pontecorvo fought against the fascists in Milan during WWII and he clearly harbors sympathy for the Algerian rebels (most often conveyed through his use of music), but he never succumbs to caricature, presenting the French with admirable even-handedness. (Even too much even-handedness, some have argued, as the central section of Pontecorvo’s plot is structured around a French bombing and three Algerian counterattacks, reversing the power differential of a technological war in which 20,000 French soldiers were killed versus over a million Algerians.)

The film also stresses the importance of media propaganda in post-WWII military actions. Exposition is relayed through offscreen radio broadcasts. Talking to the international press that was inaccessible to Algerians, the charismatic but ruthless Colonel Matthieu (a composite of several real-life French commanders played by Jean Martin, the only professional actor in the film) states that a victory in Algeria will be decided by them alone. “You want us to enlist?” one of the reporters asks. “No, we have enough fighters,” Matthieu answers. “You only need to write. And write well.” When a journalist suggests an Algerian strike was a success, Matthieu fires back, “Who do you believe, the Algerians?” and effortlessly provides spin control, claiming the strikers had really wanted a riot. The reporters scribble away.

Although the film has been criticized for clumping together all the Algerians (despite their numerous factions) into one ideological force and the French into another (despite the varied interests of their economic classes), it derives some of its most memorable scenes through their juxtaposition. Early in the film, the future revolutionary leader Ali La Pointe (played by Brahim Haggiag, a local farmer) is tripped by some wealthy French youth while he runs from the police–he decides to get up and strike one of the youth instead of escaping. Several scenes establish the culture clash between the poor inhabitants of the Casbah and the middle class French cafÈs, sites of anguishing bomb detonations which Pontecorvo refuses to gloss over. In another scene, a hapless, elderly Algerian unexpectedly becomes the focus of bourgeois fear and hatred as people identify him from the windows of their high rise apartments and in the heat of the moment, hysteria inexorably mounts.

With the exception of a few recurring characters, The Battle of Algiers is also famous for its use of the “collective hero” reminiscent of Sergei Eisenstein’s films. Instead of providing a single protagonist for audience identification, Pontecorvo shifts empathy from person to person, scene to scene, as his plot requires. This isn’t a story about one hero or one villain, but masses of people wading through history.

The film ends with Algerian independence, but as with all stories, history continues to march on. The new country experienced many more years of strife and in-fighting among its various factions, untrained in statemanship, and it continued to struggle under the yoke of neocolonialism and Western cultural and economic dominance. After Colonel Matthieu arrives in Algiers and meets with his military planners, they ask him to name his operation. Glancing randomly around the cityscape, he spots a billboard with the words BUVEZ CHAMPAGNE and decides on “Operation Champagne.” The name is not without its cruel implications: while the paratroopers bear down on the Algerian population, rounding up suspects and even torturing them for informational leads, the famed export drink symbolizes the economic power sustained by the toil of those who remain impoverished.

The Battle of Algiers is touring the US, but will appear as a Criterion Collection DVD in the coming months. The best quality QuickTime trailer can be viewed here.

My day job consists of being a graphic artist, so I thought I’d post the above drawing I did several years ago in light of the newly-announced Orson Welles retrospective happening simultaneously in late-February at the Film Forum in New York City and the American Cinematheque in Los Angeles.

While it will be a treat to see any monumental, baroque Welles film on the big screen (like 1962′s The Trial, a criminally underrated movie), I’m particularly excited about the rare bits and scraps of unfinished projects compiled by the Munich Filmmuseum in this series.

For more info on Welles, be sure to check out the excellent online resource, Wellesnet.

Back from Palm Springs, I’ll be adding some new commentary soon.

ïindieWIRE has posted their top twenty undistributed films of 2003, starting (alphabetically) with one of my favorites, Ross McElwee’s Bright Leaves.

ïDVD Beaver has posted a shot comparison of the new UK DVD of F.W. Murnau’s 1924 masterpiece, The Last Laugh, an 80th anniversary special edition based on the 2003 restoration by Murnau Stiftung/Transit Films. It is far superior to the 2001 Kino release.

ïI’m leaving for PSIFF today, but I’ve decided to cut my trip short–expect a summary and a look at Rialto Pictures’ rerelease of The Battle of Algiers in a few days.

I’m pleased to announce a site I co-admin, Masters of Cinema, has been nominated by Cinemarati for Best Film-Related Web Site of 2003. I also whole-heartedly endorse our competition:

NOMINEES

ï Bright Lights Film Journal
ï DVD Beaver
ïThe Fog of War
ï GreenCine Daily
ïMasters of Cinema
ïMidnight Eye
ï Senses of Cinema
ïThe Tulse Luper Suitcases Web Archive

As I mentioned in my earlier blog, I’m going to be out-of-town for a few days for the Palm Springs International Film Festival. I hope to find an Internet cafÈ and make some screening updates to the blog, but we’ll see.

In the meantime, a site reader who goes by the name Samurai Jack has contributed the excellent, historically sensitive piece below on Alexander Sokurov’s wonderful 2002/2003 film, Russian Ark. (But if the writer would prefer to go by any other name, I’d love to change the credit. ) It has been released as a fine DVD by Wellspring with loads of extras.

And finally, don’t forget to pick-up the new Criterion DVD of Akira Kurosawa’s finest film, Ikiru (1952), hitting shelves today. óDoug

* * * * *

By Samurai Jack

The feature film, as an art form, is an artifact of the editing process. Short takes ranging in length from seconds to minutes are intercut and assembledto create scenes, sequences, and finally a narrative of one kind or another.

In the US, D. W. Griffith used editing to tell overlapping stories that couldn’t be told any other way. For Sergei Eisenstein, the father of Soviet montage cinema, the edit was more than a tool or device. It was a means of going beyond what could be captured in any single image, of straining toward a world of meaning beyond what was “there” in a static way — a meaning that had to be constructed by the viewer. It was, in keeping with contemporary Marxist sensibilities, very much an activist approach to cinema, forward-looking and oriented toward change, and intended to move the viewer to action.

Decades later, another notable Russian director, Andrei Tarkovsky, took a diametrically opposed approach, experimenting in such films as Solaris (1972) and Offret (The Sacrifice) (1986) with extended takes, sustained in some cases for the better part of a quarter hour (about the limit with traditional film, since a film canister holds only about ten or fifteen minutes of film).

Tarkovsky’s extended takes were in a way the antithesis of Eisenstein’s activist montage cinema, inviting the viewer to contemplation rather than inciting to action, offering an experience defined not by a succession of images but by a succession of moments. A convert to Russian Orthodoxy, Tarkovsky brought to issues of Russian identity and culture a sensibility very different from Eisenstein’s, and his relations with the Soviet government were even touchier than Eisenstein’s had been.

Once the advent of digital video freed filmmakers from the constraints of physical film, it was only a matter of time before someone set out to make a feature film entirely in one take, without a single edit or cut. Perhaps serendipitously, the first filmmaker to actually do so was another Russian, Aleksandr Sokurov; and the theme of his landmark film, a meditation on Russia’s cultural heritage and current identity crisis, offers striking resonances with Eisenstein and Tarkovsky.

Where Eisenstein’s approach was forward-looking, Russian Ark, which wanders among the galleries and hallways of the Hermitage, a St. Petersburg monastery turned museum, is awash in nostalgia — a sentiment for the most part scrupulously avoided in Russian cinema under the Soviet regime. (Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia [1983] was, significantly, the first film he made after defecting to the West.)

Where Eisenstein’s dramatic cuts emphasized revolutionary change and radical action, Sokurov’s hypnotic, deliberate pacing and dreamlike narrative logic create an inexorable flow of events in which, as in a dream, there can be no decisive action, no revolutionary events, only passive experience and contemplation.

Adrift in time, wandering back and forth among the centuries with thousands of costumed extras and actors representing 200 years of Russian history, Sokurov’s camera follows an unseen narrator and a black-garbed French diplomat who seem often unclear where or when they are, while in the background various historical figures wander by in varying degrees of lucidity (at one point we see Catherine the Great, here preoccupied, like many an unhappy dreamer, with finding the toilet).

Torn between wistful visions of Russia’s own lost glory and an uneasy awareness of the long shadow of European cultural hegemony, Russian Ark evokes, perhaps, a sense of cultural lassitude or inertia, a lack of a clear way forward, contrasting with the optimistic futurism of Eisenstein’s Marxist milieu. There is transcendence in Sokurov’s vision, but transcendence remembered rather than living transcendence, a bittersweet dream overshadowed by the sense of a bleak waking reality, from which the viewer finally awakens, stirred but not transformed.

Films that are historically significant in some way, that represent some landmark achievement or breakthrough in the history of cinema, don’t always have the artistic or aesthetic substance to bear their own significance. Some milestones are also masterpieces, and would be worth remembering and watching even if they weren’t milestones. But not all. Citizen Kane (1941) would still be known today even if its groundbreaking storytelling approach had first been pioneered by earlier films. But would even serious cinephiles go much out of their way to see The Jazz Singer (1927) if not for its claim to fame as the first talkie?

The first feature film shot entirely in one take could have been a tedious stunt or gimmick — something done just because it was possible, not because the technique in any way served the subject matter or themes. Some viewers, indeed, may find Russian Ark just such a bore. But Sokurov has found the right marriage of subject, theme, and technique.

Too much commentary on Russian Ark, including the DVD commentary track by producer Jens Meuer, is preoccupied with the technical aspects of the production. Certainly, the film’s technical achievement is its claim to fame; and there is considerable behind-the-scenes drama in the 96-minute shoot, with a production crew carrying hundreds of pounds of equipment from gallery to gallery, and a cast of thousands of all awaiting their moment, knowing that they must complete the film in one day or not at all.

What is needed is more attention to what is actually seen on the screen, the historical figures and periods represented as well as the historical and cultural significance of the Hermitage’s various galleries and treasures. Critics dismissive of Russian Ark have suggested that beyond its novelty value the film is best suited as an attraction at the Hermitage itself, as a preliminary to touring the museum. More appreciative viewers might equally feel that touring the museum could be helpful as a preliminary to watching the film. At the very least, a future DVD release would be immensely enhanced by an additional commentary track with an expert in Russian art and history — a tour guide to Sokurov’s exploration of Russia’s cultural soul.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Back from the holidays, I thought I’d list my requisite end of the year top ten lists, although I hasten to add that there are plenty of films I’ve yet to see. (For example, I’m still looking forward to seeing Tsai Ling-miang’s Goodbye Dragon Inn and Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Distant, both of which I’ll get to see at the impressive Palm Springs International Film Festival in about a week.) In addition, release and exhibition dates for one’s hometown vary wildly and virtually any argument for restricting a list to one or the other category will inevitably involve compromises. (For example, Springtime in a Small Town is a 2002 film I saw in 2003 that won’t get its official Los Angeles release until 2004.)

Having said that, here are some titles which highlighted my viewing year:

New Releases

1. The Son (Le fils) (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne)

The Dardennes’ followup to their formidable La Promesse (1996) and Rosetta (1999) is equally rooted in working class Belgian life, recreating the sights and sounds of carpentry and physical labor as it sneakily unearths a story of forgiveness. Bressonian in more ways than one, the film suggests the mysterious inner life of its characters by rigorously adhering to its surfaces–wood beams and tools, blank faces and backs, action and movement–creating a never-ending paradox of materialism and meaning. “Hide the ideas, but so that people find them,” Bresson once wrote, “The most important will be the most hidden.” The Dardennes understand this.

2. Drifters (Wang Xiaoshuai)

I’ve only seen one of Wang’s previous features, Beijing Bicycle (2001), which I found engaging if a bit superficial, but this film lingers in my mind with its mixture of painterly cinematography, a slowly unveiling narrative, and its detailed depiction of a desperate youth culture in contemporary China on the eve of its entry into the World Trade Organization. Like several notable films this year, the movie humanizes immigration issues and foregrounds the realities of “globalization”–a term governments selectively apply to the exchange of goods across borders while they simultaneously prevent people from going anywhere.

3. Bright Leaves (Ross McElwee)

I’m a passionate devotee of the essay film, and McElwee’s latest is a marvelously entertaining and reflective one. Starting with his innocuous encounter with a cousin who suggests their great grandfather, a North Carolina tobacco entrepreneur, might have been the inspiration for the Michael Curtiz film Bright Leaf (1950), the film develops into a humorous and thoughtful commentary on history and legacy, culture and commercialism. Far from an easy attack on the tobacco industry, the film expresses a complex array of feelings over the “bright leaf”–an economic bedrock which is a source of pride as well as cancer that’s deeply and problematically enmeshed within Southern life today.

4. Bus 174 (JosÈ Padilha)

This brilliant Brazilian documentary concerns itself with a national tragedy that occurred in the streets of Rio de Janeiro on June 12, 2000: a city bus was hijacked by a 16-year-old homeless child and the ordeal was broadcast live, moment-to-moment, by the national media. The portrait that initially emerged seemed to merely reinforce popular notions about social divisions. In contrast, Padilha’s film debut systematically reconstructs the incident using the network footage augmented with his own investigations into the hijacker’s personal life (which the media never covered). He interviews police officers, reporters, street kids, and even gangsters and provides a challenging and compassionate portrait of Rio’s complex social organization and systemic cycles of violence.

5. To Be and To Have ( tre et avoir) (Nicolas Philibert)

I managed to see this film at the Palm Springs fest a year ago and I’ve been raving about it ever since. Recently released in Canada on DVD for those who missed it, the film depicts the teaching methods of a one-room schoolteacher in rural France and the charming, diverse personalities of his young students (all less than 12 years of age) are conveyed through well-observed moments, piecemeal fashion. Philibert previously succeeded in creating a similarly fascinating and illuminating study of another “closed system,” the culture and codes of deaf people in 1992′s In the Land of the Deaf, and here the faces and idiosyncratic behaviors of the children develop a great deal of cumulative empathy–by the film’s end, the viewer can share the sadness of those graduating and moving on.

6. Distant Lights (Lichter) (Hans-Christian Schmid)

A number of strong pictures this year dealt with international refugees, a theme that seems increasingly pronounced given reasons stated in my Drifters comments above, as well as wars creating situations like those of In This World, below. Distant Lights, which has won a variety of German film awards, is a passionate and intricate depiction of the clash of political cultures (past and present as well as international) set on the Oder river between Germany and Poland. The film depicts critical moments during 48 hours in the lives of a generous ensemble of characters and never loses its sense of urgency. Ukrainian refugees seeking asylum in Germany, smugglers, interpreters, struggling entrepreneurs, and taxi drivers all desparately attempt to navigate a tricky cutthroat environment which necessitates constant decision making and moral judgments.

7. In This World (Michael Winterbottom)

British filmmaker Winterbottom seems intent on reinventing himself with each new project, and this film offers his most assured work to date. Telling the story of two Afghan refugees who attempt to make their way to London, the film was shot with handheld digital cameras in cinemascope in actual refugee camps and bazaars and checkpoints along the way, utilizing nonprofessional actors for the leads and developing the script en route. It’s a timely recontextualization of neorealist techniques that provides a heart-rending portrait of souls in flight. A DVD has been released in the UK.

8. Springtime in a Small Town (Tian Zhuangzhuang)

Blacklisted Zhuangzhuang’s first film in ten years (after his brilliant but banned The Blue Kite) is a remake of Mu Fei’s celebrated 1948 film of the same name, but this time lensed in color by Mark Li Ping-bing, one of the world’s great cinematographers, in his sensuous The Flowers of Shanghai and In the Mood for Love shades of blue and gold. A sickly man and his distant wife are visited by an old friend, and the film becomes a chamber piece addressing their complex relationships, visually manifested in the crumbling architecture around them. A subtle and beautiful film, also available on DVD in the UK.

9. The Station Agent (Thomas McCarthy)

My friend Darren Hughes recommended this movie as a film “completely in love with its characters,” and in a time when movies of the hip, Sundance variety seem intent on demonstrating just how ironically detached they can be, it’s like a miracle. After being disappointed by other critical favs like Lost in Translation and Mystic River, I was glad to catch up with this in its last legs of L.A. distribution. Indeed, the film seems to enjoy the company of its characters so much that its enforced narrative discipline near the end seems a bit artificial. But we can forgive its rare excesses in light of its abiding, generous heart.

10. The Triplettes of Belleville (Sylvain Chomet)

As enjoyable to listen to as it is to watch, this nearly dialogue-less animated epic involving a grandmother-child relationship, an aging dog, a bicycle race, gangsters, gypsy jazz, and many other odd and eclectic details is as much a tribute to Jacques Tati as anything else. Wonderfully detailed, each “shot” is strikingly composed and executed, so that only by the time the film erupts in a bizarre shoot-out through the dark streets of a fantastical town does it begin to lose steam. Thankfully it ends there, leaving viewers with a wide assortment of visual memories, foot-taping rhythms, and silly grins on their faces.

Theatrical Revivals

1. Au hasard Balthazar (Robert Bresson, 1966)

2. The Grin Without a Cat (Chris Marker, 1977 & 1993)

3. Sankofa (Haile Gerima, 1993)

4. Le Bonheur (AgnËs Varda, 1965)

5. Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors (Hong Sang Soo, 2000)

6. Jacquot de Nantes (AgnËs Varda, 1991)

7. The Milky Way (Luis BuÒuel, 1969)

8. Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1966)

9. Under the Skin of the City (Rakhshan Bani Eternad, 2001)

10. Alien: The Director’s Cut (Ridley Scott, 1979 & 2003)

Region 1 DVDs

1. Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927)
An unbelievably gorgeous restoration, with copious extras. It must have come out too early in the year for many critics to remember in their year-end awards, but I can’t think of a more historically valuable release for cinephiles.

2. Sunrise (F.W. Murnau, 1927)
Murnau has fared well in the last couple of years on DVD–check out Kino’s collected box set, recently released. Unfortunately, this beautiful disc (with a detailed shot-by-shot commentary by cinematography John Bailey) can only be ordered via Fox’s buy-three special offer.

3. Three Colours, The Decalogue (Krzyztof Kieslowski)
Although the first release is in many ways simply a repackaging of the MK2 set released for Region 2 years ago, the transfers are better and it’s good to have the series readily available on disc in North America now. (Although it’s too bad Miramax opted not to subtitle the Greek chorale in Blue, unlike the European editions.) The Decalogue is also a refurbished release, back in print from Facets, and it offers some intriguing extras, including the chance to watch Kieslowski profoundly irritate a group of journalists.

4. Tokyo Story, By Brakhage, Umberto D, Hiroshima mon amour, Throne of Blood (Various)
I’ve decided to clump my favorite Criterion releases into one entry so they don’t take over my list. We already know they make great DVDs, but the above are stellar films, previously hard to find on video, and loaded with informative extras.

5. Night of the Demon (Jacques Tourneur, 1957)
Tourneur’s classic horror film was recut and released in America as Curse of the Demon, and this has been the only version available on VHS for years. Columbia saved the day by releasing both films on one DVD this year, and in very good prints. We’re still waiting for Tourneur-Lewton films like I Walked With a Zombie, but until then this valuable release will suffice.

6. Legend (Ridley Scott, 1985)
All right it’s not high art, but Scott’s lovely fantasy, envisioned both as a (pre-CGI) live-action Disney film and a tribute to Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast, is lavishly photographed and much stronger a genre entry than the critical establishment has suggested over the years. The director’s cut is the original pre-release version, and its pacing and thematic development is much more fluid than the choppy Universal cut. It also boasts the original, rarely-heard Jerry Goldsmith score and bountiful extras. Most fans didn’t actually think this print existed anymore, so it’s a treat to finally have it as a two-disc set.

7. Castle in the Sky, Kiki’s Delivery Service (Hayao Miyazaki, 1986, 1989)
Two of Miyazaki’s most entertaining films finally get a polished subtitle/dubbing/distribution job by Disney. Too bad John Lasseter drools all over the introductions.

8. L’Atalante (Jean Vigo, 1934)
It’s a bare-bones release, but it’s such an amazing film by 29-year-old Vigo (who died the year it debuted) and a stellar transfer (direct from Gaumont) that New Yorker Video deserves kudos for it. Drop whatever you’re doing and watch it immediately.

9. Man of Aran, Louisiana Story (Robert J. Flaherty, 1934, 1948)
Why the Criterion Collection decided to “demote” these releases to their Home Vision label is beyond me: stunningly filmed documents about people in their time and place, landmarks of the documentary genre, and loaded with extras. Although they may lack the journalistic rigor of modern non-fiction films, few movies are as lyrical or moving.

10. Christ in Concrete (Edward Dmytryk, 1948)
All Day Entertainment pulled-out all the stops for this fine release of a film never available on video and essentially banned by McCarthy-era witchhunting. The film is a curious mixture of social realism and film noir and recreates Brooklyn alleys, skyrises, and dilapidated apartments with great skill and feeling, telling the story of a bricklayer who can’t quite make ends meet no matter how hard he tries.

Non-Region 1 DVDs (with English options)

1. M (Fritz Lang, 1931) (Eureka, UK)

2. Coffret Alain Resnais 5 DVD: L’Amour ‡ mort, I Want to go Home, MÈlo, Mon oncle d’AmÈrique, La Vie est un roman (MK2, France)

3. La Belle Noiseuse (Jacques Rivette, 1991) (Artificial Eye, UK)

4. Spirit of the Beehive (Victor Erice, 1973) (Optimum Releasing, UK)

5. Der var Engang (Once Upon a Time) (Carl Th. Dreyer, 1922) (Danish Film Institute, Denmark)

6. La JetÈe/Sans soleil (Chris Marker, 1962, 1982) (Arte Video, France)

7. Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Classics: From 1983-1986 (Sino Movie, Taiwan)

8. Journey to Italy (Voyage to Italy) (Roberto Rossellini, 1957) (British Film Institute, UK)

9. An Actor’s Revenge (Kon Ichikawa, 1963) (British Film Institute, UK)

10. Repentance (Tengiz Abuladze, 1984) (RusCiCo, Russia)