Lost in Criterion

Spine 468: Science is Fiction - 23 Films by Jean Painlevé

Jean Painlevé (1902-1989) was not the first person to make scientific documentaries for a general audience, but he was certainly very influential on nature documentarians real and otherwise from Attenborough to Zissou. Criterion serves us a collection of many, though not quite all, of his 5-30 minute films which fuse underwater and microscopic filmography with an eye toward surrealist humor and, if you can read it right, a mind toward social change.

Spine 467: Empire of Passion

Nagisa Ōshima's follow-up to last week's In the Realm of the Senses is less sexually explicit and harder to pin down politically than that work, but Empire of Passion is still an interesting tale of greed and ghosts.

Spine 466: In the Realm of the Sense

There was a moment in Nagisa Ōshima's obscenity trial for the printed script edition of In the Realm of the Sense where the director apologizes to the judges and police, saying, essentially, "I showed the script to all my colleagues and none of them found it titillating, so I'm sorry you guys got turned on." And I don't think he's just having a laugh at their expense. The film is certainly full, nearly wall to wall, of sex, unsimulated even, but being full of sex and being sexy are different things, and Ōshima has a different goal.

Spine 465: Dodes'ka-den

Apparently considered one of Akira Kurosawa's worst films, Dodes'ka-den started life as a joint project between the top four directors in Japan calling themselves the Four Horsemen but ended up being one of the lowest points of Kurosawa's life. We explore a theory on why Japan didn't connect with the subject matter as we talk class and caste in Japanese history and a depressing and visually stunning movie.

Spine 464: Danton

Andrzej Wajda's Danton explores the French revolution through the Polish director's own experience under Soviet rule, a rule he saw as anti-worker and therefore anti-progress. Using the titular Danton and Robespierre, the film presents the tension of revolution, or perhaps violent revolution, if Wajda makes such a distinction, and particularly a revolution that seeks only to rotate who is in power instead of upturning power hierarchies.

Revolutions that promise equality without upheaving power structures aren't revolutions. Equality must always broaden.

Spine: 463: Il Generale Della Rovere

Vittorio De Sica stars in Roberto Rossellini's Il Generale Della Rovere, the story of a conman coerced into impersonating an Italian resistance general, but really it's two stories: the first half is De Sica's character's everyday life promising to rescue people's family members from Nazi imprisonment if they can raise the money and his arrest and trial for doing that, then the second half is a war prison film of the same man on the inside doing his new con job. A fascinating and great movie, but like many others, would have been better if more people making it were communists instead of just nationalists.

Spine 462: The Last Metro

A very different François Truffaut film to any we've seen before, The Last Metro draws on the director's memories of a childhood during Occupation to craft a story that is not autobiographical by any means, but instead tells the story of the community around a theater and the various ways people persevered.

Spine 461: Hobson's Choice

David Lean's adaptation of Hobson's Choice brings the atmospheric panache that made his Great Expectations so amazing but putting it into a comedy about a guy who doesn't want his adult daughters to get married in a situation that seems like a dark parody of an Ozu plot. Ultimately, though, it's a pretty light story about a woman who exercises her own self-determination by forcing a man to be more assertive.

Spine 460: Simon of the Desert

Our second of back-to-back Luis Buñuel films brings us more of the director's critique of organized religion and Christianity in particular. In particular with Simon of the Desert Buñuel takes aim at performative deprecation, the inherent arrogance of claiming to be the lowest of the low (particularly when you're also literally putting yourself on a pedestal). This is maybe the most Pat has enjoyed Buñuel's religious work, but also it's just hard not to be delighted by Silvia Pinal's portrayal of the devil.

Spine 459: The Exterminating Angel

Luis Buñuel was a man who absolutely loved a metaphorical dinner party. I believe The Exterminating Angel is our fourth encounter with one in one of the man's films, and it may be one of my favorites, though they are all amazing in their own right. This week Criterion also provides us with some bonus biographical material on Buñuel that includes a story about ruining a Christmas dinner at Charlie Chaplins house and calling it "praxis".

This week is also the first of a one-two punch of Buñuel's final Mexican films. While this week focuses on the aristocracy (and a little on religion), next week swings hard at organized Christianity and I can't wait to share that episode with you as well.

Spine 458: El Norte

Gregory Nava's El Norte is a gut-wrenching tale of indigenous teen siblings escaping violence in Guatemala. It tells a story that really hadn't been told before, centering characters whose stories often go ignored even today.
But Nava seems reluctant to tell the whole story, to show where the blame lies, to make the connections between the violence Enrique and Rosa are fleeing and the history of colonialism and US foreign policy that put and kept those perpetrating the violence in power. Roger Ebert praised the film for not being political. Ebert is wrong. The film is inherently political, and even if it means to only show the story through the eyes of the siblings experiencing it, those siblings have a political life -- they are fleeing because their father was beheaded for being a labor organizer! -- meaning that Nava's apolitical approach removes a dimension of not just the story, but the people.

Spine 457: Magnificent Obsession

For Douglas Sirk's adaptation of Lloyd C. Douglas's "liberal Christianity x pop psychology" novel the director makes the right choice to instead just remake the earlier 1935 John M. Stahl directed adaptation, which Criterion helpfully provides as a bonus feature on this release. While the 1935 version tries to show the absurdity of the melodrama with a slapstick-y comedy style, Sirk just ratchets up the melodrama to even more absurd levels. 

Spine 456: The Taking of Power by Louis XIV

Is Roberto Rossellini's French television biopic of Louis XIV an attack on the aristocracy or a treatise of the loneliness of being king? Is it an examination of the excesses that led to the Revolution or a celebration of the founding of modern France? It's a little complicated, possibly because Rossellini came to the project late into pre-production and did what he could with material he didn't really agree with. Of course whatever its intended message, applying the techniques of Italian neorealism to a period piece makes for a fascinating and interesting film.

Spine 455: White Dog

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

Spine 454: Europa

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

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

Spine 453: Chungking Express

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

Spine 452: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

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

Spine 451: Fanfan la Tulipe

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

Spine 450: Bottle Rocket

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

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

Spine 449: Missing

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

Spine 448: Le deuxième souffle

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

Spine 447:Le doulos

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

Spine 446: An Autumn Afternoon

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

Spine 445:The Earrings of Madame De...

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

Spine 444: Le Plaisir

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