Blondes at Work, Frank McDonald, 1938
Very smooth and pleasant. The Torchy films are clearly better when the mystery plot is kept as flimsy as possible. Rosella Towne is an interesting, subdued histrionic, downbeat glamorous presence in this.
Zwei Frauen, Ludwig Wüst, 2006
How it feels at the receiving end of a blow.
Daze Raper, Wilson Yip, 1995
By far the best about this are a few scenes of Au and (I guess) Farini Cheung slouching on a sofa, teasing each other in a sort of detached way which suggests that, in the end, both of them are too lazy for sex. But these moments are completely disconnected from what is otherwise a modest Cat-III film. Which itself is not as seedy as the title suggests, though the few exploitation elements come with a matter-of-fact-ugliness that is somewhat irritating.
In a few more scenes early in the film, dedicated to Au's psychosis, Yip at least tries out some paranoid imagery, but as soon as the plot kicks in, this turns into a boring procedural.
Pity, Babis Makridis, 2018
By now basically all of these greek films feel like the work of nerds who finally got the upper hand on the schoolyard only to reveal that they themselves hold the exact same mindset as the bullies who used to beat them up.
Honestly, the only thing worse than Haneke`s moralising is Haneke without the moralising.
Polzeiruf 110: Wölfe, Christian Petzold, 2016
I was a bit afraid of Petzold`s Polizeirufs, but at least this one is completely enchanting. Lewtonesque not only in its premise (basically THE LEOPARD MAN, mixed with some of the usual Petzold themes) and the dreamlike progression of the story, but also in its eagerness to get distracted by alluring sounds and images, its use of strange minor characters, its weird notion of a closed-off, almost claustrophobic diegetic space which nevertheless constantly opens up surprising new vistas (what`s up with these fish tanks (?) in the mortuary?).
Also, a magnificent colour film. In the end Petzold is always first and foremost a romantic. It`s all about Barbara Auer wearing a red jacket and both Matthias Brandt`s and Petzold`s willingness to follow her wherever she might go. Who can blame them?
Ägyptische Finsternis, Ludwig Wüst, 2002
This didn`t really click with me, especially the use of a theater actress in the main role somehow bugged me. I couldn`t stop viewing her "reactions" to the world around her as an elaborate but ultimately pointless act. Everything`s premeditated. The few moments of fluorescent, bleeding, poisonous colour invading the otherwise numb world of loss and detachment are marvellous, though.
The Cincinnati Kid, Norman Jewison, 1965
Of course a film without even a single shot of Chow Yun Fat's arrogant grin can't possibly be among the best gambling movies ever made, but THE CINCINATTI KID has its charms. There's enough melancholia to justify the somewhat strained elegance, there's prime McQueen smoothness and above else, there's Tuesday Weld.
The decision to leave her out of the film for most of its running time is spot on, because this way, she doesn't become part of the world of gambling. Instead, she defines McQueen's world by staying outside of it, by projecting a sense of utopian extra-terrioriality, especially in the beautiful scene at the farm.
Applause, Rouben Mamoulian, 1929
When April arrives back from the convent, where she was sent to in order to protect her from the sleaze of showbiz, the city is all noise and steam and movement and, above all, legs. A few minutes of pure immersion into the textures of modernity, without any dialogue. She'd thought she'd escaped from the plump legs of the hard-working burlesque girls, but now they're back, always on the move, stomping away. Her mother tries to help, but she can't distance herself from the asshole boyfriend, whose shadow is always looming on the wall. Later, different kinds of legs are closing in on her, but she is lucky, the right kind of sailor comes along and takes her away fom a claustrophobic backstage melodrama, up into the wirings of a bridge, up to the top of a skyscraper. Love, architecture and cinema triumph over the stage and all kinds of stagebound feelings.
The Killing of Satan, Efren C. Pinon, 1984
Perfectly adequate at what it does. The manichean world widens in perfect pace with the flow of the story, from the lonely, chosen individual right through to the totality of heaven and hell. Of course the mugging and the Melies-style effects in the action scenes are funny, but the use of closeups is often pretty good. And some scenes - like when Satan, while waiting for the virgin sacrifice to be delivered to him, decides to stay on his throne, smooth and restrained like the somewhat vain gentleman he is, but also kind of nervous - approach a level of delirious absurdity only really good b-movies can deliver.
The Case of the Curious Bride, Michael Curtiz, 1935
Like with a lot of whodunit mysteries, I lost interest in the story about two thirds through... the different stages of world exploration are almost always more stimulating than the subsequent arbitrary reshuffling of cards. Curtiz's usual insistence on flow for its own sake (all these dissolves) doesn't help that much either, this time, but the William and Jenkins banter keeps the ball rolling.
Otobüs, Tunc Okan, 1975
A harrowing account of turkish migrants hoping for work in Europe being stranded in the center of Stockholm, in a vehicle so washed-up and out of place the city officials for a while seem to think it might just vanish into thin air if they keep ignoring it. The men only dare to venture into the cold city at night, leading to a number of encounters which, each in its own way, reinforce their outsiderness. A - necessary and complementary - sideplot ends in a decidedly dreary Hamburg bordello.
Okan's decision to foreclose all imaginary solutions (like, especially, a sudden emergence of agency among the migrants) gives OTOBÜS its extraordinary strength and puts a great amount of recent political cinema to shame.
Gangway for Tomorrow, John H. Auer, 1943
A miniature epic, with five setups (rather than storylines) of decidedly different style, tone and, especially, weight being fed into the war effort. Highlights are a gothic horror style walk to the gallows, with all the dread transposed from the executed to the executioner, and John Carradine as a suave libertarian hobo being "cured" by a healthy dose of americana. Margo's episode is fascinating too, and even the weakest one (Amelita Ward's) has an interesting voice over ("There was New York. And there was Miss America").
The Mule, Clint Eastwood, 2018
As long as we all keep insulting each other, all hope is not lost and no one is beyond redeeming. This has been a key Eastwood insight at least since HEARTBREAK RIDGE, but the insults never before were delivered with that much gentle tenderness.
Night of the Felines, Noboru Tanaka, 1972
When the sausage reminds you of work but you have to eat it anyway. What really makes this memorable, though, isn`t the fact, that in the world of the film, desire can only be approached cynically, but the unability of both Tanaka and basically all of his characters to accept just this.
Without Reservation, Mervyn LeRoy, 1946
A star author mistakes a man for a literary character she invented herself. And then, in response, tries to unwrite her own book by travelling incognito alongside the man. While a visit on a prairie farm cures her of her socialist ramblings.
I guess I'm rather alone in my absolute adoration of storylines like this. And I have to admit that WITHOUT RESERVATIONS isn't quite as lively and bold as some of the similarly themed mid-30s LeRoy comedies about fluid identities and the inherent absurdity of the star system (see esp. PAGE MISS GLORY!). But Colbert is a delight as always and Wayne's small moments of clumsiness (when he pulls her up in the sleeping car and doesn't quite know what to do next) make the romance work.
Der goldene Handschuh, Fatih Akin, 2019
The dark heart of the old Bundesrepublik beats in Hamburg, St. Pauli. It is decorated with heavy red carpets and loads of tacky knick-knack and powered by cheap liquor, sentimental Schlager tunes, crude unfunny jokes, blunt sexual fantasies and the gendered violence that goes along with all of that. It is mapped out primarily over two spaces (in between them: a loving recreation of the Reeperbahn strip of the 70s): the public spectacel of the GOLDENER HANDSCHUH, and, as its necessary counterpart, the private hellhole of Fritz Honka`s appartment, the place where the intrusive showmanship of the HANDSCHUH is supposed to be transformed into something more "tangible". Honka himself being, of course, nothing but the ultimate emanation of all of the above, the Mr. Hyde lurking just beneath the official, clean Dr. Jekyll Germany.
If it is hard to face this dark heart head-on, then not because DER GOLDENE HANDSCHUH is especially violent (safe for one scene, it isn`t), but because everyone who was raised in the old (western) Germany, no matter how far removed from St. Pauli, will recognize at least parts of its fabric. Just like in the film: everyone gets treated to at least a few maggots on the Sunday coffee table or some splashes of the local bully`s piss.
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All of this might be rather blunt and crude (like many good films are), and some of the more scripted scenes indeed don`t work particularly well. Plus I`m still not sure if Dassler`s irritating central performance ultimately works for or against the film. Even beyond that I can think of enough reasons for not liking Akin`s film, but the hysterical reactions after the Berlin premiere border on the ridiculous.
I`m not in the business of declaring things toxic, but the combination of woke criticism and film festival madness might be just that.
Gods and Monsters, Bill Condon, 1998
A James Whale biopic doubling as a free-wheeling rumination on old Hollywood`s gay undercurrents (or just plain currents) doesn`t have the right to be as dull as this film unfortunately is. All the worse because Ian McKellen really is good and the scenes in which he is given space sometimes work out quite well... but almost every single time the film cuts away from him to one of the badly written fictional characters surrounding him things get very cringy very fast.
The Sisters Brothers, Jacques Audiard, 2018
Second time around, still no love. I just can't understand why Audiard, of all people, can't muster an ounce of true enthusiasm when handed the possibility to direct a real, bona fide western.
Johnny Eager, Mervyn LeRoy, 1941
A convoluted noir plot, hold down both by MGM`s stuffy house style and by a talky script that only occasionally allows for sharp, well handled bursts of action. Robert Taylor`s smooth detachement fits the flat dramatics, Lana Turner is stylish but wasted. Van Heflin`s showy performance really is the most memorable thing about this, but mostly because it feels completely out of place. He really has nothing whatsoever to do in the film, he just tags along in order to ooze a general, unspecific air of tortured introspection.
Frankenstein, Kenneth Branagh, 1994
In theory this is a fascinating mid nineties monstrosity, a film quite conciously exchanging mood and genre-based consistency for blockbuster grandeur, for the "everything and its opposite as well" approach of films like Jurassic Park, but not yet quite sure how to suture it all together, constantly threatening to break up at the seams. In practice, though, it's just plain boring. Branagh rushes through scene after scene and almost never trusts his better, pulpier instincts. The few moments Helena Bonham Carter (she`s worth at least a full star here) is allowed to shine in make the dullness of everything else all the more obvious.
Madame Curie, Mervyn LeRoy, 1943
An extremely pleasant surprise after BLOSSOMS IN THE DUST, the other, rather dull biopic LeRoy made with Greer Garson. Maybe this time everything works because Marie Curie already is a household name and LeRoy doesn't have to sell her exceptionality to the audience. He can take her genius for granted and focus on character instead.
The leads work together perfectly during the courtship routines. Especially Pidgeon's softspoken clumsiness is an asset in scene after scene, starting at their first, silent meeting in front of a closed door. A man not quite comfortable with his bodily height somehow given form and stature by the woman he falls in love with. She herself obviously doesn't need him, as she arrives in the film fully formed, but this makes her choosing love all the more affecting.
One highlight is the scene immediately before the proposal. The weird wrinkled staircase he has to climb (several times) before entering her room already contains the truth of their romance - which, in a sense, never blooms into mutual satisfaction but retains elements of awkward courtship until the very end.
But this doesn't mean they're lacking anything. It just means that later, when the science comes in, their experiments always also concern their relationship. She just has to discover, with his clumsy help, the missing, active element. And afterwards, she has to seperate this element, their own element. The experiments are always also experiments of / in love, studies in sensual, almost (but never quite) sexual physics. Two rapt, glowing faces illuminated by their aspiration towards total knowledge...
You would think, given similar themes in similar films, that their search must be either a substitute or a metaphor for children. But they do have two of those, too. In fact it's the other way around: In one scene they tell their - otherwise completely unsignificant - daughter a nighttime story that feeds back into their scientific work. Their love is nothing but (see also the great Tourneur short of the same name) a romance of radium.
When in the last act things revert back to private life, the film obviously doesn't have many places to go. But this doesn't matter at all, as we already have reached that level of prime Hollywood craziness which immediately elevates every glance, every gesture into cristallized feelings.
Erotic Diary of an Office Lady, Masaru Konuma, 1977
Living in a grey, monotonous city, handling big, clunky typewriters by day and needy, clumsy men by night. The few colours that do shine through are so beautiful it hurts (I would love to see this on a non-faded 35mm print one day, not sure if such a thing even exists any more when it comes to japanese films from the 70s).
Pinku realism, safe for a few handheld shots filmed in a restrained, sober style. Far from subtle in its metaphors (or rather: in its insistence on turning everything into metaphors), but bluesy, powerful and unusual in its unrelenting empathy for the protagonist. The sex scenes aren't erotic, but emotionally intense, somehow even their obvious fakeness plays into this. The helplessness of it all, the bodily reality shining through nonetheless. During the last one, a rape scene oozing desolation, a hymn-like pop song kicks in, a shameless, brutally effective gesture.
Electrical Girl, Bowie Lau, 2001
Quite fun as long as it sticks to being a stupid sex comedy with a rather decent cast (even Lam Suet shows up!), but when it becomes clear that all the sfx-sex-nonsense builds up towards a boring, ultra-generic and seemingly neverending non-sfx softcore scene, my goodwill is gone immediately.
East Side, West Side, Mervyn LeRoy, 1949
In his fluent, elegant style, LeRoy sketches a few cascades of desire set in motion by the weakness of one man, played by an appropriately annoying, soft-spoken James Mason. Stanwyck is his wife, a creature of frail domesticity, clinging to stair railings, sometimes almost getting lost in decor. Ava Gardner shows up once in a while as a hardened, bird-like femme fatale and statuesque Beverly Michaels (of Hugo Haas fame) only needs one extended scene to introduce a completely different, pulpy note to the proceedings. (These sudden shifts in tone, most of the times tied to a single performance, might be one of the reasons LeRoy is so terribly underrated; for me, these are among the most fascinating aspects of his work.)
The class aspect evoced by the title is mostly sidelined - except for a single Little-Italy-vignette, this magnificent women`s picture is all about the loneliness of rich people, or of people aspiring towards the rich, like the conflicted Van Heflin character. Unlike in Sirk or Minnelli, all the conflicts are out in the open, but this doesn`t help one bit.
Destroyer, Karyn Kusama, 2018
Not every effort is well spent, especially when it comes to the hollow, gimmicky flashback structure, but there`s enough energy on the level of single scenes (especially the straighter genre stuff is handled very well) and Kidman`s performance is truly strange. It feels like the film never quite gets a grip on her.
Any Number Can Play, Mervyn LeRoy, 1949
Petty bourgeois trappings closing in on a dapper gambling maestro. Unfortunately, the deck is stacked in favor of the trappings from the start - even in the beginning, Gable`s smile is nothing but a pail shadow of the joys of a past the film doesn`t want to know much about. Therefore, ANY NUMBER CAN PLAY is successful only to the degree it can emancipate itself from its own, tired premise. Which works best in the scenes centering around the private fantasies of Alexis Smith`s character.
Stagecoach, John Ford, 1939
Been a while and I don't think I ever saw this on film before. Which might be the reason why I never realized just how beautiful the shadowy, painterly, somber second stop of the coach is. The true heart of the film aren't the celebrated Wayne action moments (I love those too, of course), but Wayne's slow nighttime pursuit of Trevor. The scene at the fence, of course, but even more so the one preceding it: The shot of her walking through the corridor, away from the camera, into the frame of light cast by the door, until her figur is fully defined by it, thereby activating him, sucking him into the same path. As perfect a cinematic definition of love as I`ve ever seen.
Joe Palooka in Triple Cross, Reginald Le Borg, 1951
Last entry in the Joe Palooka series, not really one that makes me want to check out more of it. Both Monogram and the classic b in general are on their last legs and it shows. The whiz is gone, there's almost no effort to give this form, even the body tension of the actors seem gone, they just stand there like pieces of furniture, in medium shot after medium shot. A shame, because the premise isn't bad, a few years earlier this might have been turned out to be a worthy, cross-dressing-themed variation on stuff like THE DEVIL THUMBS A RIDE or Lupino`s THE HITCH-HIKER.
Girlfight, Karyn Kusama, 2000
After the first half hour I didn't think I would like this as much as I finally did. There's a certain disconnect between Rodriguez's magnificent performance and the well-observed gym scenes on one hand and some rather stale Indiewood narrative devices (coupled with a few bad musical choices) on the other. Still, in the end, this is much more thoughtful, and at the same time more conflicted, than films like this usually are.
One of many nice details: the frequent cutaways to handwritten inspirational slogans taped to the gym walls. "Champions are made, not born", "It's not about the size of the dog in the fight, but about the size of the fight in the dog" - this is a film that really believes in stuff like this. Not only Diana, but almost all characters are defined by their ambitions and by the degree of their dedication invested in them (though a lot of ambitions are quite clearly misplaced; this is not a film about upward mobility, at least not in a simpleminded, straightforward sense). Her brother's insistance that he will do something productive with his time when she takes his place in the gym... The fact that, in the end, they really don't have sex that one night... The unusually strong focus on teaching, both in the ring and in school...
This is also why the fight with her father is a key moment. He is the only true fuck-up in the film, the only one not subscribing, in one way or another, to the aspirational ethos at the core of the film. Therefore, her beating him up is not just an act of personal emancipation, but also an act of annihilation. Indeed he just vanishes from the film afterwards, which points towards a cruel streak running underneath the generosity the film treats its characters with most of the time. Of course, this cruel streak is, at the same time, a reaction to another, more blunt and ugly, form of cruelty. There's no easy way out of the ghetto.
Jennifer`s Body, Karyn Kusama, 2009
Limited by an overeager screenplay beating every character into shape instead of letting things develop a bit more smoothly. But everyone seems to have had fun doing this, Seyfried is marvelous, Fox is adequate and Kusama's direction is excellent whenever she frees herself from all the gimmicks and focuses on Needy's anxiety and terror.
Cloistered Nun: Runa`s Confession, Masaru Konuma, 1976
Very smooth and pleasant. The Torchy films are clearly better when the mystery plot is kept as flimsy as possible. Rosella Towne is an interesting, subdued histrionic, downbeat glamorous presence in this.
Zwei Frauen, Ludwig Wüst, 2006
How it feels at the receiving end of a blow.
Daze Raper, Wilson Yip, 1995
By far the best about this are a few scenes of Au and (I guess) Farini Cheung slouching on a sofa, teasing each other in a sort of detached way which suggests that, in the end, both of them are too lazy for sex. But these moments are completely disconnected from what is otherwise a modest Cat-III film. Which itself is not as seedy as the title suggests, though the few exploitation elements come with a matter-of-fact-ugliness that is somewhat irritating.
In a few more scenes early in the film, dedicated to Au's psychosis, Yip at least tries out some paranoid imagery, but as soon as the plot kicks in, this turns into a boring procedural.
Pity, Babis Makridis, 2018
By now basically all of these greek films feel like the work of nerds who finally got the upper hand on the schoolyard only to reveal that they themselves hold the exact same mindset as the bullies who used to beat them up.
Honestly, the only thing worse than Haneke`s moralising is Haneke without the moralising.
Polzeiruf 110: Wölfe, Christian Petzold, 2016
I was a bit afraid of Petzold`s Polizeirufs, but at least this one is completely enchanting. Lewtonesque not only in its premise (basically THE LEOPARD MAN, mixed with some of the usual Petzold themes) and the dreamlike progression of the story, but also in its eagerness to get distracted by alluring sounds and images, its use of strange minor characters, its weird notion of a closed-off, almost claustrophobic diegetic space which nevertheless constantly opens up surprising new vistas (what`s up with these fish tanks (?) in the mortuary?).
Also, a magnificent colour film. In the end Petzold is always first and foremost a romantic. It`s all about Barbara Auer wearing a red jacket and both Matthias Brandt`s and Petzold`s willingness to follow her wherever she might go. Who can blame them?
Ägyptische Finsternis, Ludwig Wüst, 2002
This didn`t really click with me, especially the use of a theater actress in the main role somehow bugged me. I couldn`t stop viewing her "reactions" to the world around her as an elaborate but ultimately pointless act. Everything`s premeditated. The few moments of fluorescent, bleeding, poisonous colour invading the otherwise numb world of loss and detachment are marvellous, though.
The Cincinnati Kid, Norman Jewison, 1965
Of course a film without even a single shot of Chow Yun Fat's arrogant grin can't possibly be among the best gambling movies ever made, but THE CINCINATTI KID has its charms. There's enough melancholia to justify the somewhat strained elegance, there's prime McQueen smoothness and above else, there's Tuesday Weld.
The decision to leave her out of the film for most of its running time is spot on, because this way, she doesn't become part of the world of gambling. Instead, she defines McQueen's world by staying outside of it, by projecting a sense of utopian extra-terrioriality, especially in the beautiful scene at the farm.
Applause, Rouben Mamoulian, 1929
When April arrives back from the convent, where she was sent to in order to protect her from the sleaze of showbiz, the city is all noise and steam and movement and, above all, legs. A few minutes of pure immersion into the textures of modernity, without any dialogue. She'd thought she'd escaped from the plump legs of the hard-working burlesque girls, but now they're back, always on the move, stomping away. Her mother tries to help, but she can't distance herself from the asshole boyfriend, whose shadow is always looming on the wall. Later, different kinds of legs are closing in on her, but she is lucky, the right kind of sailor comes along and takes her away fom a claustrophobic backstage melodrama, up into the wirings of a bridge, up to the top of a skyscraper. Love, architecture and cinema triumph over the stage and all kinds of stagebound feelings.
The Killing of Satan, Efren C. Pinon, 1984
Perfectly adequate at what it does. The manichean world widens in perfect pace with the flow of the story, from the lonely, chosen individual right through to the totality of heaven and hell. Of course the mugging and the Melies-style effects in the action scenes are funny, but the use of closeups is often pretty good. And some scenes - like when Satan, while waiting for the virgin sacrifice to be delivered to him, decides to stay on his throne, smooth and restrained like the somewhat vain gentleman he is, but also kind of nervous - approach a level of delirious absurdity only really good b-movies can deliver.
The Case of the Curious Bride, Michael Curtiz, 1935
Like with a lot of whodunit mysteries, I lost interest in the story about two thirds through... the different stages of world exploration are almost always more stimulating than the subsequent arbitrary reshuffling of cards. Curtiz's usual insistence on flow for its own sake (all these dissolves) doesn't help that much either, this time, but the William and Jenkins banter keeps the ball rolling.
Otobüs, Tunc Okan, 1975
A harrowing account of turkish migrants hoping for work in Europe being stranded in the center of Stockholm, in a vehicle so washed-up and out of place the city officials for a while seem to think it might just vanish into thin air if they keep ignoring it. The men only dare to venture into the cold city at night, leading to a number of encounters which, each in its own way, reinforce their outsiderness. A - necessary and complementary - sideplot ends in a decidedly dreary Hamburg bordello.
Okan's decision to foreclose all imaginary solutions (like, especially, a sudden emergence of agency among the migrants) gives OTOBÜS its extraordinary strength and puts a great amount of recent political cinema to shame.
Gangway for Tomorrow, John H. Auer, 1943
A miniature epic, with five setups (rather than storylines) of decidedly different style, tone and, especially, weight being fed into the war effort. Highlights are a gothic horror style walk to the gallows, with all the dread transposed from the executed to the executioner, and John Carradine as a suave libertarian hobo being "cured" by a healthy dose of americana. Margo's episode is fascinating too, and even the weakest one (Amelita Ward's) has an interesting voice over ("There was New York. And there was Miss America").
The Mule, Clint Eastwood, 2018
As long as we all keep insulting each other, all hope is not lost and no one is beyond redeeming. This has been a key Eastwood insight at least since HEARTBREAK RIDGE, but the insults never before were delivered with that much gentle tenderness.
Night of the Felines, Noboru Tanaka, 1972
When the sausage reminds you of work but you have to eat it anyway. What really makes this memorable, though, isn`t the fact, that in the world of the film, desire can only be approached cynically, but the unability of both Tanaka and basically all of his characters to accept just this.
Without Reservation, Mervyn LeRoy, 1946
A star author mistakes a man for a literary character she invented herself. And then, in response, tries to unwrite her own book by travelling incognito alongside the man. While a visit on a prairie farm cures her of her socialist ramblings.
I guess I'm rather alone in my absolute adoration of storylines like this. And I have to admit that WITHOUT RESERVATIONS isn't quite as lively and bold as some of the similarly themed mid-30s LeRoy comedies about fluid identities and the inherent absurdity of the star system (see esp. PAGE MISS GLORY!). But Colbert is a delight as always and Wayne's small moments of clumsiness (when he pulls her up in the sleeping car and doesn't quite know what to do next) make the romance work.
Der goldene Handschuh, Fatih Akin, 2019
The dark heart of the old Bundesrepublik beats in Hamburg, St. Pauli. It is decorated with heavy red carpets and loads of tacky knick-knack and powered by cheap liquor, sentimental Schlager tunes, crude unfunny jokes, blunt sexual fantasies and the gendered violence that goes along with all of that. It is mapped out primarily over two spaces (in between them: a loving recreation of the Reeperbahn strip of the 70s): the public spectacel of the GOLDENER HANDSCHUH, and, as its necessary counterpart, the private hellhole of Fritz Honka`s appartment, the place where the intrusive showmanship of the HANDSCHUH is supposed to be transformed into something more "tangible". Honka himself being, of course, nothing but the ultimate emanation of all of the above, the Mr. Hyde lurking just beneath the official, clean Dr. Jekyll Germany.
If it is hard to face this dark heart head-on, then not because DER GOLDENE HANDSCHUH is especially violent (safe for one scene, it isn`t), but because everyone who was raised in the old (western) Germany, no matter how far removed from St. Pauli, will recognize at least parts of its fabric. Just like in the film: everyone gets treated to at least a few maggots on the Sunday coffee table or some splashes of the local bully`s piss.
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All of this might be rather blunt and crude (like many good films are), and some of the more scripted scenes indeed don`t work particularly well. Plus I`m still not sure if Dassler`s irritating central performance ultimately works for or against the film. Even beyond that I can think of enough reasons for not liking Akin`s film, but the hysterical reactions after the Berlin premiere border on the ridiculous.
I`m not in the business of declaring things toxic, but the combination of woke criticism and film festival madness might be just that.
Gods and Monsters, Bill Condon, 1998
A James Whale biopic doubling as a free-wheeling rumination on old Hollywood`s gay undercurrents (or just plain currents) doesn`t have the right to be as dull as this film unfortunately is. All the worse because Ian McKellen really is good and the scenes in which he is given space sometimes work out quite well... but almost every single time the film cuts away from him to one of the badly written fictional characters surrounding him things get very cringy very fast.
The Sisters Brothers, Jacques Audiard, 2018
Second time around, still no love. I just can't understand why Audiard, of all people, can't muster an ounce of true enthusiasm when handed the possibility to direct a real, bona fide western.
Johnny Eager, Mervyn LeRoy, 1941
A convoluted noir plot, hold down both by MGM`s stuffy house style and by a talky script that only occasionally allows for sharp, well handled bursts of action. Robert Taylor`s smooth detachement fits the flat dramatics, Lana Turner is stylish but wasted. Van Heflin`s showy performance really is the most memorable thing about this, but mostly because it feels completely out of place. He really has nothing whatsoever to do in the film, he just tags along in order to ooze a general, unspecific air of tortured introspection.
Frankenstein, Kenneth Branagh, 1994
In theory this is a fascinating mid nineties monstrosity, a film quite conciously exchanging mood and genre-based consistency for blockbuster grandeur, for the "everything and its opposite as well" approach of films like Jurassic Park, but not yet quite sure how to suture it all together, constantly threatening to break up at the seams. In practice, though, it's just plain boring. Branagh rushes through scene after scene and almost never trusts his better, pulpier instincts. The few moments Helena Bonham Carter (she`s worth at least a full star here) is allowed to shine in make the dullness of everything else all the more obvious.
Madame Curie, Mervyn LeRoy, 1943
An extremely pleasant surprise after BLOSSOMS IN THE DUST, the other, rather dull biopic LeRoy made with Greer Garson. Maybe this time everything works because Marie Curie already is a household name and LeRoy doesn't have to sell her exceptionality to the audience. He can take her genius for granted and focus on character instead.
The leads work together perfectly during the courtship routines. Especially Pidgeon's softspoken clumsiness is an asset in scene after scene, starting at their first, silent meeting in front of a closed door. A man not quite comfortable with his bodily height somehow given form and stature by the woman he falls in love with. She herself obviously doesn't need him, as she arrives in the film fully formed, but this makes her choosing love all the more affecting.
One highlight is the scene immediately before the proposal. The weird wrinkled staircase he has to climb (several times) before entering her room already contains the truth of their romance - which, in a sense, never blooms into mutual satisfaction but retains elements of awkward courtship until the very end.
But this doesn't mean they're lacking anything. It just means that later, when the science comes in, their experiments always also concern their relationship. She just has to discover, with his clumsy help, the missing, active element. And afterwards, she has to seperate this element, their own element. The experiments are always also experiments of / in love, studies in sensual, almost (but never quite) sexual physics. Two rapt, glowing faces illuminated by their aspiration towards total knowledge...
You would think, given similar themes in similar films, that their search must be either a substitute or a metaphor for children. But they do have two of those, too. In fact it's the other way around: In one scene they tell their - otherwise completely unsignificant - daughter a nighttime story that feeds back into their scientific work. Their love is nothing but (see also the great Tourneur short of the same name) a romance of radium.
When in the last act things revert back to private life, the film obviously doesn't have many places to go. But this doesn't matter at all, as we already have reached that level of prime Hollywood craziness which immediately elevates every glance, every gesture into cristallized feelings.
Erotic Diary of an Office Lady, Masaru Konuma, 1977
Living in a grey, monotonous city, handling big, clunky typewriters by day and needy, clumsy men by night. The few colours that do shine through are so beautiful it hurts (I would love to see this on a non-faded 35mm print one day, not sure if such a thing even exists any more when it comes to japanese films from the 70s).
Pinku realism, safe for a few handheld shots filmed in a restrained, sober style. Far from subtle in its metaphors (or rather: in its insistence on turning everything into metaphors), but bluesy, powerful and unusual in its unrelenting empathy for the protagonist. The sex scenes aren't erotic, but emotionally intense, somehow even their obvious fakeness plays into this. The helplessness of it all, the bodily reality shining through nonetheless. During the last one, a rape scene oozing desolation, a hymn-like pop song kicks in, a shameless, brutally effective gesture.
Electrical Girl, Bowie Lau, 2001
Quite fun as long as it sticks to being a stupid sex comedy with a rather decent cast (even Lam Suet shows up!), but when it becomes clear that all the sfx-sex-nonsense builds up towards a boring, ultra-generic and seemingly neverending non-sfx softcore scene, my goodwill is gone immediately.
East Side, West Side, Mervyn LeRoy, 1949
In his fluent, elegant style, LeRoy sketches a few cascades of desire set in motion by the weakness of one man, played by an appropriately annoying, soft-spoken James Mason. Stanwyck is his wife, a creature of frail domesticity, clinging to stair railings, sometimes almost getting lost in decor. Ava Gardner shows up once in a while as a hardened, bird-like femme fatale and statuesque Beverly Michaels (of Hugo Haas fame) only needs one extended scene to introduce a completely different, pulpy note to the proceedings. (These sudden shifts in tone, most of the times tied to a single performance, might be one of the reasons LeRoy is so terribly underrated; for me, these are among the most fascinating aspects of his work.)
The class aspect evoced by the title is mostly sidelined - except for a single Little-Italy-vignette, this magnificent women`s picture is all about the loneliness of rich people, or of people aspiring towards the rich, like the conflicted Van Heflin character. Unlike in Sirk or Minnelli, all the conflicts are out in the open, but this doesn`t help one bit.
Destroyer, Karyn Kusama, 2018
Not every effort is well spent, especially when it comes to the hollow, gimmicky flashback structure, but there`s enough energy on the level of single scenes (especially the straighter genre stuff is handled very well) and Kidman`s performance is truly strange. It feels like the film never quite gets a grip on her.
Any Number Can Play, Mervyn LeRoy, 1949
Petty bourgeois trappings closing in on a dapper gambling maestro. Unfortunately, the deck is stacked in favor of the trappings from the start - even in the beginning, Gable`s smile is nothing but a pail shadow of the joys of a past the film doesn`t want to know much about. Therefore, ANY NUMBER CAN PLAY is successful only to the degree it can emancipate itself from its own, tired premise. Which works best in the scenes centering around the private fantasies of Alexis Smith`s character.
Stagecoach, John Ford, 1939
Been a while and I don't think I ever saw this on film before. Which might be the reason why I never realized just how beautiful the shadowy, painterly, somber second stop of the coach is. The true heart of the film aren't the celebrated Wayne action moments (I love those too, of course), but Wayne's slow nighttime pursuit of Trevor. The scene at the fence, of course, but even more so the one preceding it: The shot of her walking through the corridor, away from the camera, into the frame of light cast by the door, until her figur is fully defined by it, thereby activating him, sucking him into the same path. As perfect a cinematic definition of love as I`ve ever seen.
Joe Palooka in Triple Cross, Reginald Le Borg, 1951
Last entry in the Joe Palooka series, not really one that makes me want to check out more of it. Both Monogram and the classic b in general are on their last legs and it shows. The whiz is gone, there's almost no effort to give this form, even the body tension of the actors seem gone, they just stand there like pieces of furniture, in medium shot after medium shot. A shame, because the premise isn't bad, a few years earlier this might have been turned out to be a worthy, cross-dressing-themed variation on stuff like THE DEVIL THUMBS A RIDE or Lupino`s THE HITCH-HIKER.
Girlfight, Karyn Kusama, 2000
After the first half hour I didn't think I would like this as much as I finally did. There's a certain disconnect between Rodriguez's magnificent performance and the well-observed gym scenes on one hand and some rather stale Indiewood narrative devices (coupled with a few bad musical choices) on the other. Still, in the end, this is much more thoughtful, and at the same time more conflicted, than films like this usually are.
One of many nice details: the frequent cutaways to handwritten inspirational slogans taped to the gym walls. "Champions are made, not born", "It's not about the size of the dog in the fight, but about the size of the fight in the dog" - this is a film that really believes in stuff like this. Not only Diana, but almost all characters are defined by their ambitions and by the degree of their dedication invested in them (though a lot of ambitions are quite clearly misplaced; this is not a film about upward mobility, at least not in a simpleminded, straightforward sense). Her brother's insistance that he will do something productive with his time when she takes his place in the gym... The fact that, in the end, they really don't have sex that one night... The unusually strong focus on teaching, both in the ring and in school...
This is also why the fight with her father is a key moment. He is the only true fuck-up in the film, the only one not subscribing, in one way or another, to the aspirational ethos at the core of the film. Therefore, her beating him up is not just an act of personal emancipation, but also an act of annihilation. Indeed he just vanishes from the film afterwards, which points towards a cruel streak running underneath the generosity the film treats its characters with most of the time. Of course, this cruel streak is, at the same time, a reaction to another, more blunt and ugly, form of cruelty. There's no easy way out of the ghetto.
Jennifer`s Body, Karyn Kusama, 2009
Limited by an overeager screenplay beating every character into shape instead of letting things develop a bit more smoothly. But everyone seems to have had fun doing this, Seyfried is marvelous, Fox is adequate and Kusama's direction is excellent whenever she frees herself from all the gimmicks and focuses on Needy's anxiety and terror.
Cloistered Nun: Runa`s Confession, Masaru Konuma, 1976
Without all the cultural baggage western nunsploitation films automatically bring to the topic, Konuma explores the inherent obscenity of catholic imagery in a delightful, blunt way, with some playful color coding thrown in. I didn't care about the revenge-by-way-of-real-estate-deal plot, though, somehow its cynicism doesn't fit the reckless, almost slacker feel of the best parts of this (riding the vacuum pipe, the ice skating scene, the wonderful threesome at the end).
Homecoming, Mervyn LeRoy, 1948
The melodramatic foundation is, once again, marvellous. Anne Baxter as the wife almost literally tied to the domestic space, helplessly registering Gable's infidelity, by way of the letters he sends or doesn't send. Finally, Lana Turner's image is pointed out to her on a photograph with a pencil. Now she knows and now she knows she has always known. Turner herself is called "Snapshot" (while Gable goes by Ulysses D. Johnson, an extremely MGM kind of name) and gets to do a lot with her hair, especially in the best scene of the film, when she and Gable visit a pittoresque Roman bath which just happens to pop up in bombed out Europe.
There are a few more extremely beautiful scenes, but unlike in LeRoy's best 40s films, the stuffy MGM style gets in the way too often. In the end, everyone tends to explain away feelings instead of embracing / falling victim to them.
Frühjahrsparade, Geza von Bolvary, 1934
An uneasy mixture of extreme silliness on one hand and nostalgia for the Austria-Hungary Dual Monarchy and its accompanying militarism on the other. The chorus of the main tune, repeated several times, literally goes: "I don't know about that / I'm just stupid". On the other hand, when sung by the wonderful Franziska Gaal, this automatically becomes playacting more than anything else. Plus, there's the supporting cast and especially Hans Moser. A decent print might change my mind about this one.
Burning, Lee Chang-dong, 2018
As much as I was intrigued by BURNING, it never pulled me in as completely as POETRY and SECRET SUNSHINE did. One reason for this might be that, while Murakami's slacker monad characters are a good fit with Lee's sensibility (the idea to let these monads hover over an economic abyss is, I'd guess, Lee's, but works mostly well, too), his metanarrative genre inflections probably aren't. Some of the recurring mystery motifs feel a bit forced, mere signifiers of ambiguity floating through muddy semantic waters - in the end, I didn't really care whether there was a pond in the village Jong-su grew up in or not. I do appreciate the effort to flesh out the connection between writing and masturbating a bit more thoroughly, though.
What stays with me the most are the power of Jeon Jong-seo's gestures and the film's willingness to be taken in by them. Structurally, Hae-mi might just be a catalyst for Jong-su's fixation on Ben, but when it comes to performance, it's always her making the decisive moves, starting, of course, with the pantomime performance, already one of my favorite scenes of the year. The two men, meanwhile, are just acting out someone else's script.
---
Probably a completely random connection, but I was thinking about MIKE'S MURDER a few times, not only because the main plot is somewhat similar, but also because of a few more specific echos (the use of cars, the scene in the museum) and the general sense of temporal disconnect between Jong-su and Ben.
My Buddy, Steve Sekely, 1944
Two soldiers cower in the trenches during World War I, talking about their girls back home and their love for music. One of them claims to have been a professional musician, starts singing - the title tune "My Buddy" - and, getting carried away by his own performance, stands up. Only to be shot in the head immediately. While dying he confesses that he never actually stood on the stage before and worked as a soda jerk instead. A few moments later, a few other soldiers are rushing in, celebrating, because the war has ended.
Not everything is as bonkers as this scene early in the film, but MY BUDDY is a strange little programmer throughout. It starts like an at least somewhat commited, but unfocused social problems drama and develops into a sketchy gangster film with basically all important developments happening offscreen - while only truly coming alive during a few startingly elaborate and original musical interludes (my favorite is an energetic jazz performance, the weirdest is a mystery themed show tune with spoken words elements), which are completely isolated from the rest of the film, both narratively and tonally. The lead, Don Barry, blusters through the whole thing like a dime-store Cagney.
---
This is the fourth Sekely film I've seen, and while so far I don't suspect him to be a hidden master, he probably would be an interesting case study for anyone interested in researching the lesser known exile biographies of the time.
Bad Little Angel, Wilhelm Thiele, 1939
B movie americana, rooted in christianity but completely devoid of the hysterics of contemporary faith-based cinema. Executed with simpleminded, touching conviction, hampered by the dollhouse production design.
Die oder keine, Carl Froelich, 1932
In the final scene, Gitta Alpar doesn't even need to touch the ground anymore. Throughout the film, she hasn't really been earthbound, but rather a creature made up from music, light, joy and an ever-present hint of sexual ecstasy, and now she is just flipping and floating above a crowd of torch-bearing soldiers-turned-dancers, to be, in the very last shot, ultimately united with Max Hansen, the slacker prince of early German sound cinema, who couldn't wear a uniform unironically even if he wanted to. (He clearly doesn't.)
This must be at least one of the crowning achievments of late Weimar cinema's operetta genre, a mode of filmmaking in which music is almost literally in the air, up for anyone's taking. One thing that makes the best of these films so special is their uneconomical approach towards their own attractions. There's no fixed ratio of excess versus narration, sound versus image, rousing movement versus rapt stasis. This one, for example, starts with a modernist, comedic, montage-heavy city symphony miniature on the streets of Berlin, only to come to a virtual standstill a few scenes later, during Alpar's performance of La Traviata.
The whole thing is shot on a small number of sets, but every one of those feels like an adventure playground of glamour, chock full of fancy mirrors, crazy staircases and painted glass. The props aren't fixed parts of the physical worlds, but rather propositions, something to play with.
This isn't all about escapism, either. One of the most elaborate scenes centers around a border control routine. One after another, the actors enter the frame from the background and walk towards the camera through a cordon of bayonets until they arrive front and center in a medium shot. There, they perform a short musical act, mostly in a highly self-reflexive, deprecating manner, in order to introduce themselves and to gain their freedom (for a while, at least). The film fully embodies the contradictions of its time - only one year later, after the takeover, the jewish Alpar left Germany, while the director, Carl Froelich, immediately joined the NSDAP and went on, talented craftsman that he was, to become one of the defining directors of Nazi cinema. Films like THIS ONE OR NONE, though, allow a glimpse of another Germany, one which was never allowed to be.
In a better world, films like this one - and not monstrosities scripted by Thea von Harbour, or overstuffed, paranoid fever dreams, or, yes, not even those beautifully crafted Murnau exercises - would be considered the true masterpieces of German cinema.
Leichte Muse, Arthur Maria Rabenalt, 1941
A mock-biopic based on the music composed by, but not really the life of Walter Kollo (or at least, his name is not used, I don't really get why). As a film about showbiz it is rather tedious, mostly because of the inability of NS cinema to embrace the sort of drifter, vagrant, philandering lifestyle Fritsch's character is supposed to be leading / trying to get away from. But also because of the music itself - the songs display and celebrate the sort of rude sassiness the Berliners are proud to call their own but which is and always was perfectly compatible with (or maybe even an element of) the authoritarian personality.
The center of the film isn't Fritsch's success story, though, but rather its repercussions in his private life. Especially the scenes with is wife (slim-faced Adelheid Seeck in her first role; she's also in the MÄDCHEN IN UNIFORM remake and in Käutner's DER REST IST SCHWEIGEN, I need to see more of her) are deeply affecting. Again and again, she approaches him with openness, tries to become a part of his life, and again and again he rejects her, transforming her efforts into another stupid little song.
The happy ending is wrong in a way people wrongfully claim hollywood happy endings to be wrong. When compared to Nazi cinema happy endings not a single hollywood happy ending is wrong.
Homecoming, Mervyn LeRoy, 1948
The melodramatic foundation is, once again, marvellous. Anne Baxter as the wife almost literally tied to the domestic space, helplessly registering Gable's infidelity, by way of the letters he sends or doesn't send. Finally, Lana Turner's image is pointed out to her on a photograph with a pencil. Now she knows and now she knows she has always known. Turner herself is called "Snapshot" (while Gable goes by Ulysses D. Johnson, an extremely MGM kind of name) and gets to do a lot with her hair, especially in the best scene of the film, when she and Gable visit a pittoresque Roman bath which just happens to pop up in bombed out Europe.
There are a few more extremely beautiful scenes, but unlike in LeRoy's best 40s films, the stuffy MGM style gets in the way too often. In the end, everyone tends to explain away feelings instead of embracing / falling victim to them.
Frühjahrsparade, Geza von Bolvary, 1934
An uneasy mixture of extreme silliness on one hand and nostalgia for the Austria-Hungary Dual Monarchy and its accompanying militarism on the other. The chorus of the main tune, repeated several times, literally goes: "I don't know about that / I'm just stupid". On the other hand, when sung by the wonderful Franziska Gaal, this automatically becomes playacting more than anything else. Plus, there's the supporting cast and especially Hans Moser. A decent print might change my mind about this one.
Burning, Lee Chang-dong, 2018
As much as I was intrigued by BURNING, it never pulled me in as completely as POETRY and SECRET SUNSHINE did. One reason for this might be that, while Murakami's slacker monad characters are a good fit with Lee's sensibility (the idea to let these monads hover over an economic abyss is, I'd guess, Lee's, but works mostly well, too), his metanarrative genre inflections probably aren't. Some of the recurring mystery motifs feel a bit forced, mere signifiers of ambiguity floating through muddy semantic waters - in the end, I didn't really care whether there was a pond in the village Jong-su grew up in or not. I do appreciate the effort to flesh out the connection between writing and masturbating a bit more thoroughly, though.
What stays with me the most are the power of Jeon Jong-seo's gestures and the film's willingness to be taken in by them. Structurally, Hae-mi might just be a catalyst for Jong-su's fixation on Ben, but when it comes to performance, it's always her making the decisive moves, starting, of course, with the pantomime performance, already one of my favorite scenes of the year. The two men, meanwhile, are just acting out someone else's script.
---
Probably a completely random connection, but I was thinking about MIKE'S MURDER a few times, not only because the main plot is somewhat similar, but also because of a few more specific echos (the use of cars, the scene in the museum) and the general sense of temporal disconnect between Jong-su and Ben.
My Buddy, Steve Sekely, 1944
Two soldiers cower in the trenches during World War I, talking about their girls back home and their love for music. One of them claims to have been a professional musician, starts singing - the title tune "My Buddy" - and, getting carried away by his own performance, stands up. Only to be shot in the head immediately. While dying he confesses that he never actually stood on the stage before and worked as a soda jerk instead. A few moments later, a few other soldiers are rushing in, celebrating, because the war has ended.
Not everything is as bonkers as this scene early in the film, but MY BUDDY is a strange little programmer throughout. It starts like an at least somewhat commited, but unfocused social problems drama and develops into a sketchy gangster film with basically all important developments happening offscreen - while only truly coming alive during a few startingly elaborate and original musical interludes (my favorite is an energetic jazz performance, the weirdest is a mystery themed show tune with spoken words elements), which are completely isolated from the rest of the film, both narratively and tonally. The lead, Don Barry, blusters through the whole thing like a dime-store Cagney.
---
This is the fourth Sekely film I've seen, and while so far I don't suspect him to be a hidden master, he probably would be an interesting case study for anyone interested in researching the lesser known exile biographies of the time.
Bad Little Angel, Wilhelm Thiele, 1939
B movie americana, rooted in christianity but completely devoid of the hysterics of contemporary faith-based cinema. Executed with simpleminded, touching conviction, hampered by the dollhouse production design.
Die oder keine, Carl Froelich, 1932
In the final scene, Gitta Alpar doesn't even need to touch the ground anymore. Throughout the film, she hasn't really been earthbound, but rather a creature made up from music, light, joy and an ever-present hint of sexual ecstasy, and now she is just flipping and floating above a crowd of torch-bearing soldiers-turned-dancers, to be, in the very last shot, ultimately united with Max Hansen, the slacker prince of early German sound cinema, who couldn't wear a uniform unironically even if he wanted to. (He clearly doesn't.)
This must be at least one of the crowning achievments of late Weimar cinema's operetta genre, a mode of filmmaking in which music is almost literally in the air, up for anyone's taking. One thing that makes the best of these films so special is their uneconomical approach towards their own attractions. There's no fixed ratio of excess versus narration, sound versus image, rousing movement versus rapt stasis. This one, for example, starts with a modernist, comedic, montage-heavy city symphony miniature on the streets of Berlin, only to come to a virtual standstill a few scenes later, during Alpar's performance of La Traviata.
The whole thing is shot on a small number of sets, but every one of those feels like an adventure playground of glamour, chock full of fancy mirrors, crazy staircases and painted glass. The props aren't fixed parts of the physical worlds, but rather propositions, something to play with.
This isn't all about escapism, either. One of the most elaborate scenes centers around a border control routine. One after another, the actors enter the frame from the background and walk towards the camera through a cordon of bayonets until they arrive front and center in a medium shot. There, they perform a short musical act, mostly in a highly self-reflexive, deprecating manner, in order to introduce themselves and to gain their freedom (for a while, at least). The film fully embodies the contradictions of its time - only one year later, after the takeover, the jewish Alpar left Germany, while the director, Carl Froelich, immediately joined the NSDAP and went on, talented craftsman that he was, to become one of the defining directors of Nazi cinema. Films like THIS ONE OR NONE, though, allow a glimpse of another Germany, one which was never allowed to be.
In a better world, films like this one - and not monstrosities scripted by Thea von Harbour, or overstuffed, paranoid fever dreams, or, yes, not even those beautifully crafted Murnau exercises - would be considered the true masterpieces of German cinema.
Leichte Muse, Arthur Maria Rabenalt, 1941
A mock-biopic based on the music composed by, but not really the life of Walter Kollo (or at least, his name is not used, I don't really get why). As a film about showbiz it is rather tedious, mostly because of the inability of NS cinema to embrace the sort of drifter, vagrant, philandering lifestyle Fritsch's character is supposed to be leading / trying to get away from. But also because of the music itself - the songs display and celebrate the sort of rude sassiness the Berliners are proud to call their own but which is and always was perfectly compatible with (or maybe even an element of) the authoritarian personality.
The center of the film isn't Fritsch's success story, though, but rather its repercussions in his private life. Especially the scenes with is wife (slim-faced Adelheid Seeck in her first role; she's also in the MÄDCHEN IN UNIFORM remake and in Käutner's DER REST IST SCHWEIGEN, I need to see more of her) are deeply affecting. Again and again, she approaches him with openness, tries to become a part of his life, and again and again he rejects her, transforming her efforts into another stupid little song.
The happy ending is wrong in a way people wrongfully claim hollywood happy endings to be wrong. When compared to Nazi cinema happy endings not a single hollywood happy ending is wrong.
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