Friday, March 23rd

I am in for a long weekend of movies, movies and more movies. Bunuel and Bergman, but also another Samurai movie: Zatoichi meets Yojimbo. Samurai Banners is missing from the previous list.

Movies since last post:
Umberto D.
L'Argent

De Sica's Bicycle Thief is by far the best of cinema. This is not to suggest that there aren't others as good. But, there are so many elements in that particular movie that can be found recurring in the works of others, like Kurosawa, Ray and Ozu, that the movie becomes like the wolf that nursed Romulus and Remus.

Umberto D., by De Sica's own account, was his return to the form after forays like Miracle in Milan. It is a simple enough story--isn't that the most common comment about great works or narration?--but so basic that it jolts any person. It is the story of an old man and his dog. There comes a time when the old man finds the last shred of his dignity lost to the cruelty of post-war Italy. He worked for thirty years at the ministry to public affairs, he tells the passersby, who coldly look at him and walk away: how can a man, old as he is and fallen on such bad times as he is, rely solely upon the insignificance of his position in the state's schema to gather sympathy from others equally destitute, when the government he served has been that of the Fascists under Mussolini?

There are three principal characters in the movie: a maid who is unsure who is the father of the life in her womb, the dog Filke, and Umberto D. The possible father of the unborn child are on of the two: one from the north, and other from the south. And, because the recurrence of war is uncertain, an old man tries to kill himself along with the dog he loves so much.

De Sica must have been a great director: as did Fellini, De Sica used non-actors to play the best characters he has given to cinema. But, I think the principal difference between the methods of Fellini and his is in that for Fellini the non-actors are just that: props to his fancy; whereas De Sica makes them act: the maid presses a coffee grinder against her belly as she wonders who the father might be, and grinds the beans while tears flow down her face.

I watched L'Argent and thought about 300 instead. What is the language of cinema, and how are images written? Bresson's method seems too simple, but it is not, and the method in 300 is ostentatious, showey, but achieves not even a fraction of what Bresson does with two simple cuts. When Yvon grabs the waiter's shirt after being accused of spreading counterfeit money, the violence in that simple act of grabbing a man and thrusting anger into him is far larger than the machochistic growlings and bloody limb-tearing in 300.

L'Argent deserves a much longer posting; as do many of the movies in the list from yesterday. My time is running out.