1946 Poll 2.0

[sally]

but then that's even more reason to go a-wary hunting if the film called to you from a mysterious unconscious...however am not going demon chasing today because i have surrendered to peer pressure on here and am watching the devil's daughter instead

[sally]

Cool, I think we talked before about France trying to exorcise its demons of the occupation and I think it fits that pattern. We've done bad but can redeem ourselves. I liked the doctor character especially in this regard

but also i can't ever stop thinking about that time robert pattinson had a twi-stalker who thought he was her dream guy so he risked the psycho & went on a date with her, showed her the disappointing reality and broke her heart. it's the most heroic-cruel thing i ever heard.

& fresnay looks so thin, and just-turned-old here, you're right, like a translucent trevor howard, oh ♥

i'm not sure i've seen enough decoin yet to recognise him by eg his mise-en-scene etc, if i will, but he does seem to add meat, his more-than noirs, his more-than romances....(monelle must be one of my fave french films)

random note: greennui has a decoin going in DtC but i'm not sure if i'm meant to tell anyone

[sally]

inspired by mention of adorable old robinson (& indeed it echoes with the same opening shot of london bridge as keiller's film) i watched my second 46 bombed city rebirthing:

proud city: a plan for london - ralph keene

LOL! am proud! whereas the warsaw one was a melodic soviet-style ode to renewal, this one was dry, dogmatic (it was made as entreaty to londoners to please accept the council planner's utopic vision, warsovians not visibly given that choice and had already started building, don't think this london plan was ever fully realised) and the central over-explained premise is that actually the blitz did us a favour because london was SHIT beforehand and if it hadn't been bombed we'd have had to tear it down anyway

LONDON!




BADNESS!

[Lencho of the Apes]

Dirty Gertie From Harlem USA

My LB comments all ended up addressing issues that have come up in discussions at SCFZ, so I'll copy/paste...

Race movie, y'know? Cruddy in execution, but not necessarily any worse than the feeblest Monograms. Looked at first like a colorized version of Sadie McKee/Rain, but they didn't end up following that ploit thread very diligently.

Looks like Gertie-gal is slotted into that "individual woman symbolising an entire culture/nation/group" construct -- all the male characters either want to partay with her or police her -- but I find that strategy doesn't bother me so much when she's representing for a marginal group and not for the status quo.

Also, transgender representation, as we call it today, with director Spencer Williams playing "the voodoo woman." Two--spirit shamanism FTW!

[wba]

The 1940's are my worst decade as well - i've only seen 30+ films from 1946

So I can't make a Top 20...


Final list (all of these films are outstanding, of course!)


01. Lady in the Lake (Robert Montgomery, USA)
02. Nocturne (Edwin L. Marin, USA)
03. Black Angel (Roy William Neill, USA)
04. Cluny Brown (Ernst Lubitsch, USA)
05. GIlda (Charles Vidor, USA)
06. Notorious (Alfred Hitchcock, USA)
07. The Dark Corner (Henry Hathaway, USA)
08. Scared to Death (Christy Cabanne, USA)
09. La belle et la bête "Beauty and the Beast" (Jean Cocteau/René Clément, France)
10. The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks, USA)
11. Partie de campagne "A Day in the Country" (Jean Renoir, France)

[rischka]

https://twitter.com/rbgscfz/status/1511 ... QDSWK8R-FQ

somehow dismissed this as a corny propaganda movie and it's not that at all. not a bit. the tone reminds me of one of my fave hollywood musicals too - it's always fair weather. sure it'll get plenty of votes but will be a new addition to my list. america - we're not all terrible

[sally]

la foire aux chimères - pierre chenal

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORING

i've reached my limit of deformed face erich von stroheim feeling sorry for himself as metaphor for insert-your-usage movies

[rischka]

gonna revisit my least favorite p & p now. maybe i have totally misjudged it too? however i have tried more than once ...

[rischka]

Spoiler!

I hope Robert Pattinson's date didn't also commit auicide

[rischka]

Sigh. When will we be able to correct typos

[rischka]

still don't like it - it's the trial section. rayomond massey specifically

[sally]

i watched while the door was locked. not really a fan of ensemble/multi-story movies, but god i fancy the ekman genes.

[sally]

just me watching movies for 46 now? ah well, i'm over at icm now as well cuz this place is dead

watched a couple more

edgar neville's el crimen de la calle de bordadores - starts off with an insane litany of violence, so much that the rest of the film was a bit of a let-down - i have no idea what the purpose of that opening was, cuz without it the film would seem rambunctious (in that very specific spanish style, think prefiguring fernán gómez) enough. still, it was competent and enjoyable as it was

also ptushko's stone flower, which was insanely gorgeous. no one is doing anything like this at this time, are they? even the special effects-free folk wedding was amazing. i just despise that decades-long soviet male hair style (bouffant puke) which stops me fancying virtually every soviet hero from that era. other than that, parajanov is taking notes:





shadows of forgotten ancestors

[rischka]

hey i have that stone flower

um i watched swordsman II and III with brigitte lin as the badass genderfluid supervillain with a heart of gold (sometimes)

https://twitter.com/rbgscfz/status/1512 ... CKTujWmsrg

the third was my favorite as it included several sea battles!!

[rischka]

hey i put this in the wrong thread quit confusing me now i can't edit



so embarrassing

[rischka]

just for that i will watch the stone flower i know i have that somewhere... if there's a mod here you can remove my posts if they are disruptive

[sally]

i wouldn't worry about it, i doubt anyone's even noticed...

today, since i am bored of the fiction features for 46 (will probably watch what i downloaded and then that's it) i am watching the dirty, poking finger of britain instead

1. dancers at trivandrum gopinath - clarmont skrine



2. this is china - doesn't say who directed but has listed john krish as editor and it's pretty well shot so of that ilk

(shhh don't mention communists!)




3. report on greece - march of time US newsreel series

epic (and justified) trashing of the british government rule in post-war greece (but of course the US is amazing)

[sally]

4. the temple of heaven - apparently this is about the contrast between the industrialization of the cities versus traditional rural life in india, but it's just purely racist. so am retreating from the world and watching the local stuff:

5. quiet village: scenes of a cheshire life

sweet, short, gently impressionistic (ute aurand?) amateur film of great budworth




6. broad acres - narrated travelogue showing off the splendours of yorkshire - leeds east to whitby via york (the posh side)

leeds! (that M&S is still there i think, if thats looking down to vicar lane)


brimham rocks


whitby


7. we of the west riding - ken annakin

HOME! less of a travelogue more of a daily life mythologizing - all that forthright gobshite yorkshire mindset (no-)nonsense, but it looks lovely so it can say what it likes








wuthering heights! it doesn't look like that now!

[niminy-piminy]

suita warszawska - tadeusz makarczyński

viewable here: https://35mm.online/en/vod/documentary/warsaw-suite

short sweet doc showing life resilient re-emerging from bombed out mariupol, sorry, warsaw...

proud city: a plan for london - ralph keene

LOL! am proud! whereas the warsaw one was a melodic soviet-style ode to renewal, this one was dry, dogmatic (it was made as entreaty to londoners to please accept the council planner's utopic vision, warsovians not visibly given that choice and had already started building, don't think this london plan was ever fully realised) and the central over-explained premise is that actually the blitz did us a favour because london was SHIT beforehand and if it hadn't been bombed we'd have had to tear it down anyway

i watched WARSAW SUITE in 2017 (according to my dutifully collected data that serve as a solid framework upon which an ivory tower of my cinephilia is built).

but after watching...

https://vimeo.com/123147030

— London grew up without any plan or order. That's why there are all those bad and ugly things.
— And that brings us to another aspect of London. London as a machine!

... i couldn't resist rewatching WARSAW SUITE (viz link above).
and it is truly a great double bill with THE PROUD CITY: A PLAN FOR LONDON.
one can hardly find two "similar" films that are more different.

it is remarkable seeing Warsaw in complete ruins but the film suggests all that is going on there is just a "reconstruction" — i.e. bricklayers only giving bricks back (no architects or urban planners to be seen).

on the other hand, only partly damaged London is presented as a city that urgently needs a completely new masterplan (and even further demolitions) — i.e. now (after the war), we urgently need a wrecking ball, not bricklayers.

[sally]

oh i hope i didn't lure you into watching the london one on the idea that it was good (although the mustaches win)

i'm just documenting my watches mostly

[niminy-piminy]

i have no expectations, am not judgemental, and am prone to watching bad & good movies alike!
really liked these two movies as a double bill.

[brian d]

that agfacolor film sally posted made me drool. somehow i'm actually watching a movie for the first time in i don't know how long...

[sally]

i have no expectations, am not judgemental, and am prone to watching bad & good movies alike!
really liked these two movies as a double bill.

je regrette to announce that there is a third one in this descending 1946 series of civilization and its damned cities. it turns out being bombed to smithereens is the only way towards happiness. i really hope there isn't a fourth one, although i don't think the necessary director (eg yevgeny yufit??? and other necrorealist ilk) was born yet, but this one is bad enough, it has 'jolly' songs seared on top of floating rotting cat corpses *shudder*

aubervilliers - eli lotar

poverty porn poverty porn poverty porn slums of paris, with songs. the war as something that recently happened and may be a potential cause of a ruin requiring rebuilding gets a millisecond mention towards the end

[niminy-piminy]

je regrette to announce that there is a third one

at the outskirts of my picturesque birthplace, there is a Saint Gobain factory


i might try to organize an AUBERVILLIERS screening for the employees

no leisure to realize their miserable condition

[niminy-piminy]

NUMBER 3: INTERWOVEN (Harry Everett Smith, 1946)

yt = 1947-49
wiki = 1942-47 or 1947-49
lbox = 1947
mubi = 1946
imdb = 1946 !!!

https://www.imdb.com/review/rw4837526/?ref_=tt_urv
Oddly enough, there seem to be a lot of discrepancies over how Smith created this short. "Number 3: Interwoven" is the third "early abstractions" short made by Smith, five years later than the previous one, and like the other two, Wikipedia states the same info: this movie was hand-painted on 35mm film-stock and photographed on 16mm. However, other sources (like the DVD the other IMDb reviewers have seen) state that Smith used a batik process or Vaseline and tape to make it. I don't know why the methods differ so much, and this will have to remain a mystery for the time being--but I'd advise we take Smith's word for what he did, which means the batik process.

https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3840933/?ref_=tt_urv
I don't want to be harsh on the film, but it's really not much more than a series of colorful block patterns moving across the screen. Smith liked to bring folk traditions to abstract animation and one might compare this to a 1940's version of psychedelia. Come to think of it, watching it with a buzz on might heighten one's appreciation of the effort. As interesting as it is to watch, I couldn't help thinking the exercise was kind of pointless, but on the flip side, it's a lot more creative than something I would be able to put together, and for an investment of three minutes, it's not the worst thing you could do to watch the film.

https://youtu.be/whImyw_pFz8

[niminy-piminy]

HOPPITY POP (Norman McLaren, 1946)

watch here → https://www.nfb.ca/film/hoppity_pop_fr/

or with an alternate soundtrack ↓
https://youtu.be/iihgtX5ei3A

[sally]

lovely thanks jiri, any more like this?

someone randomly retweeted this today, 47 on letterboxd but 46 on imdb

https://twitter.com/ubuweb/status/1504445565303767042

[sally]

also enjoyed this also from the nfb

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7R7Uu4LxGHs

[rischka]

thx for these links you guys

[niminy-piminy]

after watching the aforementioned "Introspection" (thx!), i stayed for a bit longer on Ubu and watched moreover "a queer Meshes Of The Afternoon"...

FRAGMENT OF SEEKING (Curtis Harrington, 1946)

https://www.ubu.com/film/harrington_fragment.html

Once upon a time, the U.S. of A. had our own Jean Cocteau in the making, but he was too early for the 1960s window that let his spiritual kin (Kenneth Anger) and progeny (Andy Warhol) in, and we consigned him to a downward trajectory of increasingly camp-value-laden features until he finally had to make his living directing scattered episodes of addictive-crap TV like Dynasty. But a little treasure trove of Curtis Harrington’s dreamlike, lush, sexually ambiguous, and death-obsessed short films remains, the newly restored versions of which have now been carefully compiled for this new Blu-ray release, and they are a revelation. In the five shorts that he made between 1946 and 1955, Harrington, using more imagination and inspiration than material resources, used the magical medium of cinema to inscribe his wordless visions of the ineffable exaltations and horrors of sex and death, longing, and perpetually mutable identity onto celluloid in a way more famously associated with Luis Bunuel or David Lynch; in some ways, in the chronological aesthetic lineage of cinema, he’s the long-missing link between the two. But it’s much better late than never to have the chance to get lost in Harrington’s transfixing, seductive miniature dreamscapes.

Made while Curtis Harrington was a student at the University of Southern California, where the film was also shot, "Fragment of Seeking" features a youthful Harrington in a revealing double role. "A climactic fragment from the existence of an adolescent Narcissus", wrote Harrington to describe his breakthrough film which so impressed maverick director Albert Lewin that he recommended Harrington for his first creative job in the studio system, as an assistant to the producer Jerry Wald.