- A note to myself: I had thought of Coriolanus (Ralph Fiennes’ film) as a counter to The Winter’s Tale and As You Like It precisely because like Timon of Athens it’s story represents the failure of imagination and especially the failure of women, of marriage, of pregnancy, and especially of motherhood. In the film, Vanessa Redgrave’s final speech appealing for mercy invokes all the criteria of women, sex, love, and reproduction Shakespeare works with in the first two plays I mentioned. But here, she puts them and herself in the service of maudlin patriotism, self-interest, and hard-edged sentimentality. It is as if at that moment Shakespeare were giving Socrates reason for his hatred of women and sexual reproduction. And all this in the face of Coriolanus who, no matter what else, has some of the anagogic character of Aeneas himself, perhaps of Virgil and Dante themselves.
- The Killing, 1956, Kubrick, w/ Sterling Hayden and Colleen Grey. Always enjoy intelligent noir films and this time thought of how slowly conventions move between media and genre. novels had been changing points of view, reflecting on the same scenes from different points of view, for a very long time. Pulp cult caught up late to some of the high art devices and even then it was revelatory when Kubrick moved the device into the film noir from the Lionel White novel. Of course, to his credit, Kubrick found that pot-boiler interesting as a way of adapting the device and finding his own time/image rhythm, particularly with the camera’s movement. (viewed, 12/31/11)
- Before Sunrise, 1995, Richard Linklater, w/Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. Romance as time travel. From the train to Vienna. To see a play–cow, Marxists, like a dog . . . . Q & A time” honest answers. American boy speaks no other languages–point made twice in 20 mins. Love is complex, sex embarrassing but can speak of it. In Vienna, refer to the current war, 300 kms. away–Balkans. Record shop. Grave yard. Carnival, ferris wheel, view of city, kisses.
- Max Ophuls, The Earrings of Madame de . . . Dan Morgan’s excellent paper on camera movement, but really what is this that is not Bovary?
- Visconti, Senso. [Critical Methods–one of four films: topic, love and criticism.]
- Pierre Melville, The Priest Leon Morin. Friday July 29, 2011. A remarkable film, mostly a devastating critique of all that Morin (Belmondo) embodies. The feminist scholar who comments on the film gets this mostly wrong. Interestingly, I cannot find a very good piece of writing on Melville. There seems not even to be a biography in French or English. There is a French volume of Melville’s writings.
Paul Bové, Critical Reflections 