tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18439960.post8617184955969793760..comments2024-03-23T21:46:50.843-04:00Comments on the passionate moviegoer: cinema obscura: Sundance Discovery! "Polly Maggoo" Airs! Plus More!joe baltakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11467420961490314339noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18439960.post-79692095311722243852007-09-02T13:48:00.000-04:002007-09-02T13:48:00.000-04:00Yes, just caught up with POLLY MAGGOO, and it is s...Yes, just caught up with POLLY MAGGOO, and it is such a time capsule! There was a William Klein retrospective a while back, and i also caught his MISTER FREEDOM... Have to say that some of his short films (such as a lovely short of the billboards and neon in Times Square in the late 1950s) are really superb, but MAGGOO and FREEDOM are antic in such a 60s-attempted-counterculture way. Nevertheless, a good time was had be all....<BR/><BR/>As for TOUT VA BIEN, if i may say so, one of the problems is that, as the romantic feelings that Godard had in the 1960s started to seep out, his films became more "theoretical" and stylistically adventurous, but with less and less "love": Godard doesn't show any for Jane Fonda (as he proved in A LETTER TO JANE). I know that's totally unfashionable to say, but people who take "theoretical" and "modernist" approaches to Godard always underrate BAND OF OUTSIDERS because it's his most openly emotional movie (you know, when you're watching it, that Godard must have been totally in love with Karina at the time).<BR/><BR/>(Godard's movies with Karina actually echo the trajectory of von Sternberg's films with Dietrich: they both made seven films together. In the early films, it's obvious that the director is besotted with his leading lady, then you get the fourth film, in the case of Sternberg and Dietrich, SHANGHAI EXPRESS, in the case of Godard and Karina, BAND OF OUTSIDERS, where Dietrich is at her most glamorous and Karina is at her most touching. Then the feelings start to seep out, until you get THE DEVIL IS A WOMAN, where Dietrich is almost mask-like, and MADE IN U.S.A., where Karina is at her most dead-pan, and it's obvious that whatever relationship existed between the director and his star, it's now over.)Daryl Chinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13371258313590183345noreply@blogger.com