The Naked City (1948)

"There are eight million stories in the naked city, this has been one of them"



With eight million in all, there is the story of the seven million, nine hundredand ninety nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety nine Moore that are caught up in the same story, because what goes up must come down, and we all go
up together and we all go down together. The search is on for a man named Willie, Willie with a harmonica, Willie who is a wrestler, a real American linebacker, because Willie has lost himself and we are lost with him in this
naked city. The millions watch on, the millions of lost and searching, the poor and the penitent. In this jungle of a land, all eyes are on her, that tragic girl, the girl who didn't even have the chance to be the femme fatale, because
this is brutal noir, noir of an even more sinister type, the type where the voice overhead is cynical, but more than cynical, mocking, unconcerned, simply brutal and final. That omnipotent voice that could tell you what's happened, what's
happening and what will happen.



Such a film, such a piece of cinema deserves the respect that comes through a brutal and blunt rendition of its stark and beautiful landscape, it's beautiful and illuminating people, its finality its brushes its faults. "this case is really starting to move" . The movements and brushes and strokes of such a piece of New York fill the case with details details details that go around and around, finding but a small and insignificant man at the heart, a sobbing and sad, a lying and ridiculous little man! and there are of course the times, the times. The depression, a poor young girl who has to work at 15, 8 million and millions of people, all stacked on top of one another in such a film, such a synecdoche of New York, a synecdoche of the world, of our world, of us, one of us and each and every one... of... us...



What is this piece of what looks and feels like Manhattan, up and down, down and up, through the subways, into the private rooms, down by the sea, up in the radio studios, where the whole world is made of feet. All are feet and all walk and run and glide and find and search and end up in the strangest of places... every jewelry store in town, why?!?! Because there's been a murder that's why! And here the jewels are the answers, the jewels that sparkle and shine and bring it all back into the place where it started; this the naked city, finding itself in the middle of the night and in the heat and brutality and force of the day. What is such a tale, but the tale of ourselves?

Love on the Run (1979)

"What one has loved with youthful infatuation, what one has admired with youthful enthusiasm, that with which one has kept secret, enigmatic company in the inwardness of the soul, that which one has hidden in the heart - one always approaches this with a certain shyness, with mixed feelings, when one knows that the purpose is to understand it." (Soren Kierkegaard Either/Or)

What distinguishes Francois Truffaut particularly as a French director is his ability to create characters and scenarios which are completely transformed sheerly because of national affiliation. In America it would be impossible to interpret Antoine Doinel as anything except an emotionally scarred persona, who partakes in irresponsible flights of fancy out of a buried childhood wound. Truffaut instead sees it differently. There is something quite frankly celebratory about the manner in which Antoine chooses to conduct himself with women. It's difficult through American eyes to not view him as a weasel, a conning womanizer. At its heart Love on the Run becomes a trek into the transcendent reality of romance. Seeking to free such a concept from any particular concept of rationality, there is a fleeting, existential depth to the unspoken motivations of Antoine. The torn and frayed picture, torn by a former boyfriend, recounted as a fictional character in a fictional situation, becomes ever more elusive. The reality of such a situation is in doubt, which obviously turns the reality of the entire film into question. Instead the picture, pieced together bit by bit serves as a metaphor for the projection of Antoine's broken childhood onto the women he falls in love with. The flashbacks and allusions to The 400 Blows are particularly strange and elusive. It is only in the final scene where the connection is made with any finality. This image pronounces and invites the viewer into the attempt to recollect the two films into a spontaneously fresh interpretation.

Christine is here especially incomprehensible, representing the viewer, reading a book instead of watching a film, she is simultaneously appalled, amused and bored at Antoine's life, which obviously means so much to her character, yet not to the performance. Indeed, as the train pulls away Antoine is obviously not there, yet much of the film takes place in the impossible scenario of Antoine being there with Christine as the opposite train has already left with the image of himself, their son.

So in what way does this film find itself in the "romantically transcendent"? Certainly through the attempt for Antoine to find happiness in a chaotic and illogical world of the psyche. Sabine is undeniably a symbol for childhood affection, wearing a snoopy t-shirt and displaying a youthful flux of emotions and resolve. There is an attempt to overcome and inhabit that childhood, to possess and control it at the same time, both of which fight against the attempt. The subtle dream-like tone to the plot allows for such a psychogical interpretation to achieve its maximum potential. As a finale to the Antoine Doinel series, Love On the Run serves as a master stroke of Truffaut to expand and infinitely reinterpret his own masterpiece.

The Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival

After four months of screening short films for the festival, receiving a "lanyard" for the Sidewalk event was remarkably rewarding. The festival opened with Best Worst Movie, detailing the cult phenomenon and overall zaniness of IMDB's worst film of all time Troll 2.

Saturday I was able to catch one of the most difficult to explain, while joyous and creative films i've recently seem. Lightning Salad Moving Picture is about two twentysomethings, who refer to themselves as Superkiiids and wake up every morning talking to Robert Zemeckis through spliced footage of speeches and interviews. That description is about as logical as the film gets. Zemeckis gives the kids a mission to make Back to the Future 4. Beyond this starting point everything else is simply creative innovation somewhere between Flight of the Conchords and Charlie Kauffman. Saturday I introduced a block of socially relevant shorts at the civil rights museum. The best of these was certainly Land Gewinnen about a family who is living illegally in Germany. At the awards ceremony, the most deserving of the picks was best short for I Am So Proud of You, subtitled "The Existential Life of a Stick Figure". This one is such a strange little thing, but incredibly profound and moving. Mixed media, mixed psychology and beautiful beautiful renditions.

Belatedly Star Trek

Waiting on the dollar theater finally afforded me the chance to see the early summer hit Star Trek last night. I was anticipating a good action film that wouldn't insult my sensibilities, but was pleasantly surprised to find a modest masterpiece. After a suspenseful and emotionally satisfying opening sequence, followed by a delayed title screen preceding a hilarious Thelma and Louise-ish race through Iowa, complete with the Beastie's "Sabotage" there was no going back. Abrams takes a magnificent script and mines it for the human drama, comedy and driving action that took me back to the (circa) 1980's classics of Star Wars or Indiana Jones.

Though I was a bit disappointed to see that Roger Ebert held out as one of the few detractors of the film, citing mostly the playing fast and loose with quantum physics. True, the allusions to modern science wouldn't hold up to a physics professors scrutiny, but neither would Dr. Manhattan of Watchmen. I'm just glad to be challenged a bit and to see science fictionalized to such a narratively satisfying, if not completely faithful extent. Nonetheless, this VERY economical 127 minute film gets action just about as right as it has been gotten in the past ten years.

(500) Days of Summer

Though certainly hipster fodder (as the opening night in Birmingham, AL indicated), (500) Days of Summer (I'm in full support of the parenthesis) transcends it's "quirky" trappings. Not that the flourishes are bad, the film produces deep emotions through some heavily creative means while bouncing along in cleverly contrasting moods. Yet, in the end what becomes the chief strength of the movie is it's ability to pull you through every possible stage, before and after, a deep and abiding relationship in a thoroughly convincing fashion. The stages, as they come along pre-announced, take several days to go through in your mind. Of course, any film that mentions Belle and Sebastian's "Boy with the Arab Strap" in the opening 10 minutes is certainly promising. Watch out for the "split screen" scene. It was my favorite... After some deliberation, I've decided this one will jumpfrog "Watchmen" into the number two spot. Can anything take down "Up"?