completionist that i am, i had to sit through all of the 14 episodes of the fassbinder mega film set in berlin betwene the wars. franz biberkopf is the innocent, pimp, burglar, lover trying to go straight after he spent 4 years in a jail for murdering his girlfriend. melodramatically staged, most of the film takes place in dingy apartment interior bathed in a perpetual golden light; or if it is night the flashing lights from the neon signs outside the window. biberkopf gradually becomes more and more implicated in complications emerging from sexuality and survival. along the way he loses his hand when hsi best friend throws him out of a running car. franz is such an innocent that he even forgives the villain that. it is only when the man kills his true love that franz finally realised what a dog the man he trusted was. it all ends with a massive epilogue in which franz's delirium collages pieces of his past through the city of berlin- sometimes as stage, sometimes as projection. the music sources everyone from strauss to janis joplin.
the cinema city screenings at edward are quite the rage. we trudged there on a rainy thursday and saw godard's breathless. the first time i had seen the film i was pretty underwhelmed; but this time, perhaps because i finally got the film noir references- like a love song to those films; i loved it. the everyday landscape and people of paris trying to become american through costume and gesture- the cool dude and the sweet innocent girl who ends up being the femme fatale.
another french femme fatale is the teenager in a french school who seduces her boyfriend to kill another student with algerian background who she lusts after and hates equally- or maybe she hate the fact that she lusts after him. when on the run they in turn are kidnapped and molested by a stranger as the boyfriend struggles with own sexuality. nasty violent fun.
upkar is unbearable mostly. in spite of the few flairs in image making- the high perspetive and deep focus, the temple in the barren ground around which the film revolves, even (in an amusing way) the diptych song picturization of gulaabi raatein/ kaali raatein that makes horribly juvenile dichotomies. as far as ideology goes it can't get any more one dimensional than this- jai jawan - second half / jai kisan - first half. manoj kumar plays both.
'the architecture of doom' systematically and carefully described the relationship of culture to national socialism from the degenerate art shows to the paintings that hitler thought represented the german ideal to the grand plans for berlin as spectacle. so efficiently told and so informative- but i am more than a little tired of the nazis as documentary material.
a single mother finds a chinese nanny for her child; and has difficulties with her tenant. nothing much happens really except a red balloon floats aimlessly over paris as hope or as a dream. on the streets the film is shot as if one is standing on the edge of a pavement seeing reflections on shop windows and eavesdropping on conversations. as much as breathless imagines an america in paris, this film plays with the imaginations about paris from faraway, perhaps in the film makers head after watching the city in so many other french classic films.
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