Chris Marker

Les Status  mourent aussi (Statues also Die) 1953

Directed by Chris Marker and Alain Resnais, about

African Art and effects of colonialism.

Mademoiselle,1966

Mademoiselle abbreviation  Mlle, the French equivalent  “Miss,” referring to an unmarried female. Etymologically it means “my (young) lady” (ma demoiselle).*

Unfortunately Jeanne Moreau  isn't your ordinary  Mademoiselle. She is an out of place, arrogant, sexually repressed, sadistic posh, who terrorize the villagers with her malicious plots.

The place is a small rural village in France. She is a teacher in the  helmet school and a short hand  typist in the police station. She  has no friend or family, she walks alone  around the village  wearing high heels and  urban clothes, the villagers care and respect her. Here and there her oddities ignored by the village heads as  "problem of loneliness" they feel sorry about her.  In the fields she makes a wreath  for her head, after smelling  the flowers  she burns them with  a cigarette !!  carefully picks up the quail eggs from their nest and slowly crushes  them in her hand !!!

Other stranger  in the village is a  traveling woodcutter Manou (Ettore Manni)

and his small entourage, his son Antonio and a fellow woodman Bruno. Manou is  a strong, free spirited man who  helps to villagers  to put  out  the fires and saves the animals from drowning also  and..   he  conduct frisky small affairs with  the village adulteress  women.

In the classroom, Mademoiselle maliciously insults and punishes Antonio (Manou's son) in front of other kids, tells him that he dresses like Gypsies  asking him to leave the class and not come back until  dresses properly, she hopes to get his father attention but Antonio's own feelings about her stops him talking to his father.

Mademoiselle becomes increasingly jealous of  Manou's little affairs with the other village women, she creates havoc in the village, flooding the carrels, burning, the barns, poison the village stock, the police investigation leads  to nowhere. The ignorant villagers helplessly try to convince the police chief that the culprit is Manou, since he is a foreigner, he becomes an easy target.

In another deranged sequence of the film, Mademoiselle calmly tells the story of Gilles de Rais to the kids - a serial killer extraordinaire, French Marshal, accused with paedophobic activities, and sentenced to dead on 1440.

No collaboration from the police, the villagers have decided to take law in their own hands  Mademoiselle and Manou meet on a desolate  road in the woods, they spent the night  under the moonlit woods and hay fields, in an erotic sequence Mademoiselle reveals her full courting repertoire, neck  biting, booth liking, and wild howling, thunderstorm broke out. They make love, in the morning the love making continues.  Later Manou tells her that he is  leaving the village, she run away and returns to village,  hysterical village crowd circles her, she appears like being raped;   they want  to know if " he " is the culprit? she replies: Yes.

Original screenplay written by Jean Genet  in 1951. The subject is similar to other early Genet

scripts: Evil and isolation, and  the Evil has an aesthetic value.

 The picture is the first collaboration of Photographer David Watkin with British director Tony Richardson, Film shot in  Le Rat, in the Correze,  with entirely French crew. David Watkin remembers that Tony made the decision early on, not  to use any music other than  the actual sounds of nature .

Watkin  introduces ultra-wide screen format, using anamorphic lenses. He suggests to Tony that all the movement in a scene should be carefully arranged inside the space, and camera itself would never move. Tony loves the idea, the result  Millet like landscape painting.

Watkin's wide angle B & W photography stunningly captures the beauty of rural countryside, particularly suits the story line here, Moreaus triptych shots in front of the mirror  reflects the Freudian side of  psychologically  disturbed femme-fatal and her poignantly beautiful face. 

Dir:Tony Richardson

Story:Jean Genet

Script:Marguerite Duras

Photography: David Watkin

*Britannica Online 

The Burmese Harp (1956 )

Director: Kon Ichikawa
Screenplay: Natto Wada
Soundtrack: Akira Ifukube

"Soil of  Burma is red and so are  it's rocks"

August 1945, last days of the Pacific war, place is the tropical jungles of Burma, a  small group of Japanese soldiers are in retreat, they are  exhausted, and hungry. During their short rest, the platoon captain Inoyue, a choirmaster in civilian life,  trying keep his unit spirit up ask his soldiers to sing, together all sings a nostalgic  "going home " song. One of the soldiers named Mizuskima, is a  self thought Harp player also joins the group. The sound of his Harp releases universalities of hope and despair side by side. Shortly after they arrive a local village there they find out the war is over, Japan is surrendered Inoyue sees no point of continue to fighting and senseless blood shedding, they  surrender their guns and they have been putting in to prison camp. British commander of the camp informs Captain Inoyue that another renegade Japanese platoon continue to fight in a mountain hideout, unaware of the end of war and the surrender of their Governments. Captain Inoyue asks Mizuskima to reach out the platoon and ask them to surrender, Mizuskima accepts the task and head off the mountains. He has been only giving half an hour to convince the captain and his platoon, they reject the  offer and time is quickly run out. British forces attacks the hideout, entire platoon has been decimated, Mizuskima has injured, with a help of a Buddhist monk he survives, he shaves his head and steals the Monk's rope, disguise himself as a monk. On the way back to prisoners camp, Mizuskima sees piles of dead bodies of Japanese  soldiers left un- buried scattered around. Mizuskima, decides to stay in Burma so he can bury the dead soldiers.
"Mizushima is merely human "explain, Director Kon Ichikawa, during the 2005 interview with Criterion
" human beings are actually capable of such goodness" he adds. Ichikawa sees his movie is about  Hope; Hope for Mankind.

"Can't you see that whatever you do is futile.
  Armies of Britain and Japan  can come and fight all they wish,
  Burma is still Burma,
  Burma is the Budha's country "

 Budhist Monk

Memories of Underdevelopment (1968 )

" I discovered Elena didn't think as much as I did. I try to live as European and she makes me  feel the underdevelopment  at every step"
says Sergio Corrieri  who is the main character of  Gutierrez film.The place is Havana of 1961, aftermath of  Bay of Pigs incident through missile crisis in 1962. Sergio's parents and his wife leave Cuba for the United States, he stays, to see what  will happen to " first genuine Latin American revolution; " as sarcastically described by his Bourgeois friend Pablo, he is also getting ready to leave the island.
Sergio does not work, but he lives a comfortable life in big apartment with the income coming from other rental properties. Sergio is the man with intellect. He refuses to participate to social and political history, to him in past things were better, " Havana was the Paris of the Caribbean " but now the stores are burned down, and empty. Sergio's solution for his own political and social alienation is Elena, a sixteen years old virgin,  he quickly managed to seduce her, Elena belongs to uneducated, "underdevelopment" crowd, and the proof of this, she is "inconsistent" this rule applies to most of the Cubans, " inability to gain experience, and developed " therefore inconsistency leads to "underdevelopment" which he despise constantly.

Thomas Gutierrez Alea's , Memories of Underdevelopment (1968) film is doesn't trap itself to propaganda of revolutionary Politics, yet clearly tells us the story of psychological  one. The cultural imperialism is real and here to stay. Not to be effected ratter difficult task, fight against it another story. The last segment of the film places  live- footage of Fidel's speech before the Missile crisis " Vencermos " calls out the leader of the revolution, "we shall overcome".

Before the rain (1993)

Dir: Milcho Manchevski / Macedonia

Beauty and Brutality

"This is not a movie about the war..."says Milcho Manchevski, Macedonian Director; but "about human experience.. "  similar sentiments is also reflected by Rade Serbedzija who plays the Character Alexander, the famed photographer who lives in London, decided to return to Macedonia to help or even hoping improve the things on his mother land.. Beauty and Brutality are part of the Balkan history, conflict is a house hold concept, ethnic divides, long aged hatreds, family feuds are all part of same pastoral landscape. Before the rain tells the story of those people and the region without questioning the why's and how's, it is a gentle treatment of a brutal experience, past and present. Alexander still believes that there is hope for betterment of human life..

 a good smack for each senseless act...

 

Cousin:stop cousin? stop...

stop or I shoot you....

Alexander:shoot cousin, go ahead and shoot....

Branded to Kill

beast...we are beast.. lets have a beastly love...

 

 "Alcohol and women kills the killer .."  says the friend of ranking number 3 hit man Hanada...this professional hit man code of ethics are internal part of perverse and satirical narrative of  Branded to kill (1967)  During the brief nap scene toward to the end of film,  # 1 ranking hit man criticize his opponent training: "cant you sleep with your eyes open? you have badly trained " Director Seijun Suzuki's film full with unorthodox, and grotesque imagery; mirrors, entomological specimens, butterflies, femme-fatals, " un chien Andalou" scene; all these disjointedly connected through a brilliant editing process. The Director Seijun Suzuki is no stranger to the wars or man mindless killings. 

He has also said that he often found the horrors of war comical,^[4]

But war is very funny, you know! When you're in the middle of it, you can't help laughing. Of course it's different when you're facing the enemy. I was thrown into the sea during a bombing raid. As I was drifting, I got the giggles. When we were bombed, there were some people on the deck of the ship. That was a funny sight.^[6]

 Branded to kill was Suzuki's last movie with Nikkatsu studio. He has been fired by the studio boss finding  the film " incomprehensible" result of film commercial failure at the time of its release. Suzuki spend the next ten years fighting against the studio, without making movies. Over the next ten years his statue among the young generation of Japanese grown steadfastly. His movies rediscovered during mid 80's and he has become celebrated cult figure. David Lynch followers will enjoy Hanada's fetishistic sniffling of boiling rice scenes as reminiscent of antagonist of Blue Velvet, Frank Booth.

[4]
[6] Wikipedia 

Alexander Kluge's first short film, Brutality in Stone (1960 ) is the first attempt among the German filmmakers
of 60's and 70's to face with their impetuous history. Kluge approaches to history through the Architectural
ruins of Nazi era, now those ruins gives a voice to the unspeakable past....silent and brutal...

THE FACE OF ANOTHER, Hiroshi Teshigahara

                  the face of another    1966                           

                    a   hiroshi  teshigahara film            

                      severed ear  art work  :tomia miki  

                                                                                                           

        music: toru   takemitsu  

decor: arata isozaki 

novelist: kobo   abe


..Ohh  Vitruvian man is here...

                                                            

                             

The Face of Another

 

"Notwithstanding respectful reservations, The Face of Another is an
indelibly powerful film that never found its audience. "
Dan Harper, Senses of Cinema, Issue 26