Tag Archives: The Green Ray

December 23, 2013

The Top Home Video Release of 2013: Watching Blu Paint Dry

By michaelgloversmith

Below is my continuation of last week’s post concerning the most essential home video releases of 2013:

1. Coffret Eric Rohmer, l’Integrale (Rohmer, France, Potemkine Blu-Ray)

eric

Last month, French home video distributor Potemkine — in collaboration with everyone’s favorite fashion designer/patron of cinema, Agnes B. — unleashed a gargantuan Blu-ray and DVD box set that not even the most ardent Francophile-cinephile would have ever dreamed possible: a complete career-spanning retrospective of one of the giants of French cinema, influential film critic-turned-master filmmaker Eric Rohmer. The set, entitled Coffret Eric Rohmer, l’intégral (“The Complete Eric Rohmer Box”), includes all 24 of the writer/director’s feature-length movies, plus numerous shorts, made-for-television films and documentaries, nearly all of which have been restored and presented in high-definition, plus many extras, spread across a total of 52 discs (both Blu-ray and DVD). Among the goodies included are a 100-page book (en Francais only), a set of collectible postcards, a poster for Claire’s Knee (1970), and two teabags(?!) thrown in for good measure. The artwork adorning the box and the digipaks that house the discs is colorful, hand-drawn and delightful, making the entire enterprise feel like the precious collector’s item that it is. Although the Blu-ray discs are “Region-B locked,” meaning North American Rohmer fans will need a multi-region Blu-ray player to enjoy them (and, really, what better excuse do you need to buy a multi-region player than this?), all 24 of the features, plus the essential 1962 short The Bakery Girl of Monceau (the first of Rohmer’s “Six Moral Tales”), fortunately come with optional English subtitles. This ambitious project is easily the most impressive home-video release ever devoted to a single filmmaker, eclipsing the “Ford at Fox” DVD box set from a few years back, Universal’s “Alfred Hitchcock Masterpiece Collection” Blu-ray set from last year and anything else that I own or can even think of.

collectionneuse

Raymond Carver titled one of his most famous short stories “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” which could have served as an equally fitting subtitle for this box set. I am prepared to argue that no artist in any medium, not just cinema, explored the subject of romantic love as thoroughly as Rohmer — although it takes a certain amount of life experience to appreciate the depth of his accomplishment. I initially saw most of Rohmer’s films when I was in my early twenties and, save for the Moral Tales (his most well-known work), I hadn’t bothered to revisit his filmography until now — at the age of 38. After recently watching all of his movies in the span of less than a month, I now understand and appreciate his artistry in a way that I never had before. While I always considered myself an admirer of his “official masterpieces” (the later Moral Tales and certain key films in his other two prominent cycles: “Comedies and Proverbs” and “The Tales of the Four Seasons”), some of his films struck me as dull or even annoying, mainly because I found the characters annoying — without realizing that this was fully Rohmer’s intention. See, for example, the last segment of 1995’s Rendezvous in Paris, a hilarious satire of “mansplaining” (before the term even existed). But the most important revelation I’ve had about Rohmer is the realization that his special genius lay in his illustration of how the vast majority of human desires remain unfulfilled — the drama of his scenarios arises from the tension between what his characters want and their refusal/inability to attain it. Rohmer knew that eros has a way of making one talk, act and think differently, and this is what his camera documented with the precision of a microscope. And I’m not just referring to the kind of strong desires that make us want to sleep with person X or try to make person Y our significant other; he showed how eros can make one act just the tiniest degree nicer to a person to whom one is attracted, even when — or perhaps especially when — one feels that nothing may come of it.

mauds

The Coffret Eric Rohmer, l’intégral set feels so right. It makes sense to bundle together the complete works of Eric Rohmer even more than the filmographies of most other major directors. From The Sign of Leo in 1959 to The Romance of Astrea and Celadon nearly a half of a century later, Rohmer showed a remarkable consistency in terms of his stylistic and thematic preoccupations. Sometimes he came in for criticism for it but Rohmer really did tend to make the same movie over and over again, sometimes with only minor — though crucial — variations in the characters and settings (something that can’t really be said about his compatriots in the nouvelle vague). The conventional wisdom, at least in certain mainstream cinephile circles, is that Rohmer was a kind of French Woody Allen: an intellectual who wrote and directed “talky” (i.e., dialogue-heavy and “uncinematic”) romantic comedies about upper class characters for upper class audiences. But far from being the cinematic equivalent of “watching paint dry,” to quote the famous putdown by Gene Hackman’s detective character in Arthur Penn’s Night Moves (1975), Rohmer’s films are both more exquisitely cinematic than his detractors give him credit for while also keeping more of a critical distance from their protagonists than many of his supporters are willing to admit. (Having said that, I can’t quite go along with the assertion of critic Gilbert Adair that Rohmer’s characters “are among the most foolish, ineffectual and pathetic milquetoasts ever to have graced a cinema screen, [and] that, on a generous estimate, 90% of the celebrated talk is sheer, unadulterated twaddle” — even if Adair meant that as a compliment!)

love

As far as Rohmer’s too-little-remarked-upon visual mastery is concerned, its virtues lie in the most discreet aspects of mise-en-scene. Yes, his films are about people talking, oftentimes in a self-deceptive fashion that is humorous for the way it rings of psychological truth, but there is often a poignant discrepancy between what his dialogue tells and what his camera shows. I would argue this is dialogue that would not add up to much on the page or even the stage. It does, however, come spectacularly alive on the cinema screen because of its very specific real-world context. In other words, the things that matter most in Rohmer’s movies are the material facts of where and when his characters do their talking — character and environment are inseparable. The main interest in watching Boyfriends and Girlfriends (1987), for instance, stems not from the romantic musical-chairs plot but rather from the way this plot unfolds against the backdrop of the horrific modern “architecture” of the pre-fabricated Parisian suburb known as Cergy Pontoise. And even more important than locations in Rohmer are the seasons, the time of day and the weather (“My films are slaves to weather,” he pronounced in one interview): has the particular color of summer sunlight ever registered so vividly as in Nestor Almendros’ photography of the French Riviera in La Collectionneuse (1967)? Is it possible to watch Jean-Luis Trintignant attend midnight mass at Christmastime in the black-and-white My Night at Maud’s (1969) and not feel the coldness in one’s bones? In Rohmer’s last masterpiece, 1998’s An Autumn Tale, what sticks with one the most about the beautiful character study is the sense of what it’s like to walk among the vineyards in the Rhone wine-region of France on a perfect fall day. But Rohmer knew a thing or two about interiors too. Check out Claire’s Knee, in which Aurora, a 30-something female novelist, wears matronly dresses with floral patterns that subtly link her to the wallpaper around her (and thus the concept of domesticity), in pointed contrast to the teenaged and bare-kneed Claire (who is repeatedly associated with the outdoors).

greenray

It is precisely because Rohmer was a director who cared about such minute details that his movies — even with their lack of dramatic external “action” — deserve to be seen in high-definition. I can honestly say that I’ve never enjoyed watching movies at home more than I did while poring over the contents of this box set during the past month. Unfortunately, it seems the public has been taught to think of the Blu-ray format as one that is somehow most conducive to showcasing state-of-the-art CGI and bone-crunching sound effects. I am therefore particularly grateful to Potemkine for putting out such a lavish set devoted to this modest master with such loving care. The image and sound quality of all of the films included here are remarkably faithful to their source material, and also remarkably consistent from one film to the next (something that cannot be said about the Hitchcock Masterpiece Collection — where the A/V quality varied wildly). Note that this set consists of 30 DVDs and 22 Blu-rays. Three of the features, which have not been restored, are available on DVD only and not Blu-ray: The Lady and the Duke (2001), Triple Agent (2004) and The Romance of Astrea and Celedon (2007). This means that, ironically, the three most recent titles in the bunch are also the most underwhelming in terms of their tech specs. (Speaking as someone who prefers Rohmer’s contemporary films to his period pieces without exception, this is no big loss as the three most recent titles are also my least favorite movies in the box.) Below are my ratings of all of the individual films. The first letter grade is for the movie itself, the second is for the A/V quality.

1. The Sign of Leo: B+/A
2. The Bakery Girl of Monceau (short): A-/B+
3. Suzanne’s Career: A-/B+
4. La Collectionneuse: A/A+
5. My Night at Maud’s: A+/A
6. Claire’s Knee: A+/A+
7. Love in the Afternoon: A+/A+
8. The Marquise of O: B/A
9. Perceval: B/A+
10. The Aviator’s Wife: A+/A
11. A Good Marriage: A-/A
12. Pauline at the Beach: A/A
13. Full Moon in Paris: A/A+
14. The Green Ray: A+/A-
15. Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle: A+/A
16. Boyfriends and Girlfriends: A-/A
17. A Tale of Springtime: B+/A+
18. A Tale of Winter: A+/A+
19. The Tree, the Mayor and the Mediatheque: A/A
20. Rendezvous in Paris: A/A
21. A Summer’s Tale: B+/A+
22. An Autumn Tale: A+/A+
23. The Lady and the Duke: C+/B-
24. Triple Agent: B-/B+
25. The Romance of Astrea and Celadon: B+/B+

rohmerblu

Coffret Eric Rohmer, l’intégral can be ordered from Amazon in France here: http://tinyurl.com/klppeud

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August 20, 2013

Celluloid Flashback: The Green Ray

By michaelgloversmith

100_2611Sippin’ a Rayon Vert while watching Le Rayon Vert.

For my second “Celluloid Flashback” post, I’ve chosen to revisit Eric Rohmer’s 1986 masterpiece The Green Ray, aka Le Rayon Vert, aka Summer. (While the movie is known in the U.K. by its literally translated title, it has regrettably only ever been releaed in the U.S. by the English-language title Summer, perhaps because distributors feared “The Green Ray” would make what is essentially an intimate romantic comedy sound too much like science-fiction. Matters were infinitely complicated with the 1996 release of Rohmer’s Conte d’été, which was distributed in the U.S. as A Summer’s Tale. It’s enough to make you pull your hair out.) I had only seen The Green Ray once previously, on VHS in the 1990s, but a couple of neat coincidences caused me to track it down again recently in order to give it a fresh look. First, I noticed a relatively new craft beer on the market, a Belgian-style pale ale named “Rayon Vert,” which obviously took its name from the same Jules Verne novel that Rohmer’s film did. Because it amuses me to no end to take photographs of myself drinking a movie-related beer while watching the film in question, the idea of renting The Green Ray on DVD was thus planted. Then, I read Gilbert Adair’s delightful 1995 book Flickers in which the late critic celebrated the cinema’s centennial by analyzing one still image from one movie made each year between 1895 and 1994. His entry for the year 1986 was an examination of The Green Ray, and what he had to say about it was so damned intriguing that it sent me fairly racing to my local video store to check it out again.

greenray

The Green Ray is the fifth entry in Rohmer’s six-film cycle known as “Comedies and Proverbs” and many critics regard it as the best although, like all Rohmer’s movies, it’s not without its detractors. It tells the story of a young woman named Delphine (Marie Riviere), a Parisian secretary who decides to go on holiday alone three times over the course of one summer. The film’s true subject is loneliness and Delphine’s journeys are more psychological than physical as she learns, through her encounters with other people, a series of tough lessons that allow her to become less asocial and more engaged with life. Only when she learns to be content with herself is she truly ready to be transformed by the kind of love that has eluded her since the film’s beginning, represented by a climactic “double miracle” that recalls the cathartic ending of Roberto Rossellini’s masterpiece Journey to Italy. I believe Rohmer’s special genius as a writer/director was his uncanny ability to show, accurately and without condescension, the elaborate lengths to which human beings will go in order to deceive themselves. Marie Riviere is one of the best actresses Rohmer ever worked with (by my count he directed her a whopping 10 times, which is remarkable given how infrequently he tended to recast actors), and she arguably nails this quality of self-deception better than anyone, including the brilliant Jean-Louis Trintignant in My Night at Maud’s. The effortlessness of her semi-improvised performance was greatly abetted by Rohmer’s decision to shoot the movie with a lightweight 16mm camera, which clearly proved less intrusive than the larger and bulkier 35mm cameras to which the director was accustomed.

greenrayA real green ray photographed in Santa Cruz, California.

The film’s unusual title is a reference to a real optical phenomenon in which a setting or rising sun seems to emit a flash of green light. The observance of this phenomenon provides The Green Ray with its climactic moment (half of the “double miracle” referenced earlier), which, incidentally, is also a sublime reference point in Richard Linklater’s Before Midnight. According to Gilbert Adair, Rohmer spent a year attempting to film a real green ray and, only after deciding he was incapable of capturing one, resorted to creating the illusion in a lab with the aid of special effects. Adair calls Rohmer’s green ray “the tiniest and most moving special effect in the history of cinema” and notes that it is impossible to notice on a television screen. I practically smacked my forehead upon reading this, knowing that when I first saw the movie on VHS I literally did not see the green ray and thus did not fully comprehend the meaning of the ending. (Admittedly, I wasn’t quite as unfortunate as the student who told me she had never understood the ending of Citizen Kane until she saw it in my class because the word “Rosebud” hadn’t been legible on her tiny T.V. screen at home.) Because Adair wrote his book during the VHS era (when image resolution was considerably lower than what can be seen today on DVD or Blu-ray), I was eager to see The Green Ray again mainly to find out whether or not Rohmer’s tiny special effect would be visible on DVD. Is it? The following screen capture I created provides the answer:

vlcsnap-2013-08-17-21h25m09s99The cinema’s “tiniest and most moving special effect.”

The Green Ray won the Golden Lion at the Venice International Film Festival in 1986 (27 years ago next week). Rayon Vert Ale won Bronze at the San Diego County Fair in 2012. I endorse both.

24 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Celluloid Flashbacks, Film Reviews

June 15, 2010

Top 25 Films of the 1980s

By michaelgloversmith

25. Once Upon a Time in America (Leone, USA, 1984)

24. The Cyclist (Makhmalbaf, Iran, 1987)

Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s incredible film centers on Nasim, an Afghan immigrant living in Tehran who is virtually forced to perform a circus sideshow-like endurance test in order to pay for his wife’s medical bills: he agrees to the scheme of a shady promoter to attempt to ride a bicycle continuously for a week. As Nasim rides in circles in the same town square night and day, a crowd of spectators mounts (including politicians, gamblers and the media), all of whom attempt to manipulate the poor man’s plight for their own benefit. This powerful allegory is not unlike Bresson’s Au Hasard, Balthazar in that a holy fool character serves as a blank slate upon which the sins of mankind are imprinted.

23. Why Has Bodhi Dharma Left for the East? (Bae, S. Korea, 1989)

22. The Asthenic Syndrome (Muratova, Russia, 1989)

asthenic

21. Blade Runner (Scott, USA, 1982)

20. Time of the Gypsies (Kusturica, Yugoslavia, 1988)

19. Distant Voices, Still Lives (Davies, UK, 1988)

18. The Road Warrior (Miller, Austraila, 1981)

George Miller’s 1981 action-movie masterpiece is the best and most influential of the post-apocalyptic Eighties trend. Even more impressive is the fact that he did it all on a relatively meager budget of $2,000,000 — with old-fashioned (i.e., “real”) stunts and exceedingly clever production design in which an assortment of 20th century detritus is reconfigured in surprising ways (e.g., punk rock fashions and S&M gear happily co-exist with pieces of athletic uniforms). The film is set in the future, when gasoline is an even more precious resource than it is today, and concerns a former cop (Mel Gibson, reprising his role from the non-post-apocalyptic Mad Max) helping a gasoline-rich colony fend off attacks by a gang of marauding bandits. The climactic action set-piece, a long chase involving many different types of vehicles barreling through the barren Australian outback, takes up most of the second-half and ranks as one of the most exhilarating such scenes ever captured on celluloid.

17. Blue Velvet (Lynch, USA, 1986)

16. Come and See (Klimov, Russia, 1985)

25. Once Upon a Time in America (Leone, USA, 1984)

24. The Cyclist (Makhmalbaf, Iran, 1987)

Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s incredible film centers on Nasim, an Afghan immigrant living in Tehran who is virtually forced to perform a circus sideshow-like endurance test in order to pay for his wife’s medical bills: he agrees to the scheme of a shady promoter to attempt to ride a bicycle continuously for a week. As Nasim rides in circles in the same town square night and day, a crowd of spectators mounts (including politicians, gamblers and the media), all of whom attempt to manipulate the poor man’s plight for their own benefit. This powerful allegory is not unlike Bresson’s Au Hasard, Balthazar in that a holy fool character serves as a blank slate upon which the sins of mankind are imprinted.

23. Why Has Bodhi Dharma Left for the East? (Bae, S. Korea, 1989)

22. Blade Runner (Scott, USA, 1982)

21. Time of the Gypsies (Kusturica, Yugoslavia, 1988)

20. Distant Voices, Still Lives (Davies, UK, 1988)

19. The Road Warrior (Miller, Austraila, 1981)

George Miller’s 1981 action-movie masterpiece is the best and most influential of the post-apocalyptic Eighties trend. Even more impressive is the fact that he did it all on a relatively meager budget of $2,000,000 — with old-fashioned (i.e., “real”) stunts and exceedingly clever production design in which an assortment of 20th century detritus is reconfigured in surprising ways (e.g., punk rock fashions and S&M gear happily co-exist with pieces of athletic uniforms). The film is set in the future, when gasoline is an even more precious resource than it is today, and concerns a former cop (Mel Gibson, reprising his role from the non-post-apocalyptic Mad Max) helping a gasoline-rich colony fend off attacks by a gang of marauding bandits. The climactic action set-piece, a long chase involving many different types of vehicles barreling through the barren Australian outback, takes up most of the second-half and ranks as one of the most exhilarating such scenes ever captured on celluloid.

18. Blue Velvet (Lynch, USA, 1986)

17. Come and See (Klimov, Russia, 1985)

16. Raging Bull (Scorsese, USA, 1980)

15. The Shining (Kubrick, USA/UK, 1980)

14. The Green Ray (Rohmer, France, 1986)

13. Sans Soleil (Marker, France, 1983)

12. Brightness (Cisse, Mali, 1987)

Perhaps my favorite African movie ever is Yeelen, a hypnotic, deliberately paced art film that has all of the deceptive simplicity, power and beauty of a primeval myth. Niankoro is a boy living in rural West Africa who must undergo various rites of passage in order to become a man, which culminates in challenging his evil sorcerer father in a duel to the death. Western critics are fond of invoking Oedipus Rex when reviewing writer/director Souleymane Cissé’s masterpiece but all of this film’s potent and elaborate symbolism is apparently based on local folklore and not influenced by outside sources.

11. First Name: Carmen (Godard, France, 1983)

First-Name_Carmen_1-1024x576

10. The Thing (Carpenter, USA, 1982)

thing

9. A Nos Amours (Pialat, France, 1983)

8. A City of Sadness (Hou, Taiwan, 1989)

7. Mon Oncle d’Amerique (Resnais, France, 1980)

6. Love Streams (Cassavetes, USA, 1984)

5. Berlin Alexanderplatz (Fassbinder, Germany, 1980)

4. The Ballad of Narayama (Imamura, Japan, 1983)

3. L’argent (Bresson, France, 1983)

Robert Bresson’s swan song, as tight and compressed as a Ramones song, is a masterful update of Tolstoy’s short story The Forged Note. Bresson’s ingenious narrative follows a counterfeit bill, initially passed off in a shop as a schoolboy prank, which sets off a chain of events (an “avalanche of evil” in the director’s own indelible words) that ends with a young man murdering an entire family with an axe. This vital, rigorous movie, made when the director was 82 but seeming like the work of a much younger man, is the ultimate artistic statement about the destructive power of money.

2. The Decalogue (Kieslowski, Poland, 1988)

My opinion of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s monumental achievement — 10 one-hour movies that correspond to the 10 commandments, originally broadcast on Polish television — is inextricably bound to the circumstances under which I first saw it. I watched all 10 hours projected in 35mm, exhibited in two-hour installments a piece, while standing in the back of a movie theater that had sold out all of its screenings. As Stanley Kubrick noted, what may be most impressive about The Decalogue is the way Kieslowski and his collaborators were able to successfully dramatize ideas. It’s fun to think about how the individual episodes relate to the commandments: the first episode is a literal adaptation (a man puts his faith in the “false God” of technology — with tragic results) while others are more oblique (the “thou shall not commit adultery” episode is a tale of romantic obsession and voyeurism in which none of the characters are married). Kieslowski went on to even greater fame by subsequently making arthouse blockbusters in France (The Double Life of Veronique, the “Three Colors” trilogy) but The Decalogue easily remains my favorite of his movies.

1. Vagabond (Varda, France, 1985)

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