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Ugetsu (1953)
Filmmaker(s): Kenji Mizoguchi

In 16th century Japan, peasants Genjuro and Tobei sell their earthenware pots to a group of soldiers in a nearby village, in defiance of a local sage's warning against seeking to profit from warfare. Genjuro's pursuit of both riches and the mysterious Lady Wakasa, as well as Tobei's desire to become a samurai, run the risk of destroying both themselves and their wives, Miyagi and Ohama.

Saki from the Potter's Hands my film project, I watch a lot of movies. Good and bad. Old, new; new as old, old as "timeless." Nearly all of them take from me. Making art is hard work. Bad artists make you work harder, investing perhaps everything...


Published December 11, 2024
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Duck Amuck (1953)
A Merrie Melodie ~ Cartoon ~
Filmmaker(s): Chuck Jones

The short-tempered Daffy Duck must improvise madly as the backgrounds, his costumes, the soundtrack, even his physical form, shifts and changes at the whim of the animator.

A Short History of Film Folds have a small list of films I think are essential viewing. This is on it, only one of two allowed for that year. Looking at my list, there are a few animated shorts, and I think that makes sense. Animators...


Published December 11, 2024
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Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
What a Glorious Feeling!
Filmmaker(s): Gene Kelly, Stanley Donen

In 1927 Hollywood, a silent film production company and cast make a difficult transition to sound.

Folded Eye Jazz is a nearly perfect film from my perspective: It feels naturally improvised. Its episodes are radically discontinuous, but feel like fluid transitions. It has some great numbers, including the incomparable Cyd Charisse. But what really puts this on my `must see' list is...


Published December 11, 2024
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Othello (1951)
Orson Welles' magnificent screening of Shakespeare's immortal tragedy
Filmmaker(s): Orson Welles

When a secret marriage is planned between Othello, a Moorish general, and Desdemona, the daughter of Senator Brabantio, her old suitor Roderigo takes it hard. He allies himself with Iago, who has his own grudge against Othello, and the two conspire to bring Othello down. When their first plan, to have him accused of witchcraft, fails, they plant evidence intended to make him believe Desdemona is unfaithful.

Dimensional Filmmaking on Shakespeare films is rather like admiring Easter Eggs. First the inside: this was never a great play, relative to Shakespeare's other works. His great plays are about ideas, with characters as vectors to prod and activate them. This play is merely about characters,...


Published December 10, 2024
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A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
...Blanche, who wanted so much to stay a lady...
Filmmaker(s): Elia Kazan

A fading southern belle moves in with her sister in New Orleans where her ferocious brother-in-law takes stabs at her sanity.

Mass Transit vast majority of films use someone else's vocabulary, so when you can run across one that helped create that vocabulary it is cause for celebration. Usually the originality is in the vision of the filmmaker, but here it is in the manner of...


Published December 11, 2024
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The Red Shoes (1948)
Dance she did, and dance she must - between her two loves

In this classic drama, Vicky Page is an aspiring ballerina torn between her dedication to dance and her desire to love. While her imperious instructor, Boris Lermontov, urges to her to forget anything but ballet, Vicky begins to fall for the charming young composer Julian Craster. Eventually Vicky, under great emotional stress, must choose to pursue either her art or her romance, a decision that carries serious consequences.

No Constraints, Never Stops the past two years, I've been working to see and understand what I think important in film. My primary value is in the exploration of self-referential storytelling. That's where the story in the film is about the story of the film....


Published December 11, 2024
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The Lady from Shanghai (1947)
I told you... you know nothing about wickedness
Filmmaker(s): Orson Welles

A romantic drifter gets caught between a corrupt tycoon and his voluptuous wife.

Chinese Puzzle first mystery is to guess what Welles' original film was like. That makes this a real adventure -- to see an incomplete skeleton and using cinematic forensics, imagine the beautiful woman it once supported. If you do, you will both see and experience perhaps...


Published December 11, 2024
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Sullivan’s Travels (1941)
Veronica Lake’s on the Take
Filmmaker(s): Preston Sturges

Successful movie director John L. Sullivan, convinced he won't be able to film his ambitious masterpiece until he has suffered, dons a hobo disguise and sets off on a journey, aiming to "know trouble" first-hand. When all he finds is a train ride back to Hollywood and a beautiful blonde companion, he redoubles his efforts, managing to land himself in more trouble than he bargained for when he loses his memory and ends up a prisoner on a chain gang.

A Turning Point about Turning are films that do a good job occupying your time and those that enrich your life. My comments here are part of an enterprise to build a fully enriched visual imagination. But there is a third category, it seems: films...


Published December 11, 2024
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Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941)
It's a Fields-day of fun!
Filmmaker(s): Edward F. Cline

Never Give a Sucker an Even Break is a 1941 film about a man who wants to sell a film story to Esoteric Studios. On the way he gets insulted by little boys, beaten up for ogling a woman, and abused by a waitress. W. C. Fields' last starring role in a feature-length film.

Jumping Suckers We is possibly the last gasp of vaudevillian humour in movies, and to my mind the best beyond the early Marx brothers movies — which were just filmed acts. But this is something quite different, firmly a film, a folded film, the kind I...


Published December 11, 2024
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Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
The Happiest, Dopiest, Grumpiest, Sneeziest movie of the year.

A beautiful girl, Snow White, takes refuge in the forest in the house of seven dwarfs to hide from her stepmother, the wicked Queen. The Queen is jealous because she wants to be known as "the fairest in the land," and Snow White's beauty surpasses her own.

Stained Glass have a lot of complaints about Disney; what he made personally and the lumbering beast his studio has become. In particular, he murdered one of the most precious literary structures we have in Alice. But in his first big project, he did well enough...


Published December 10, 2024
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