Pitfall (1948)

An anti-hero of a noir film simply MUST be employed by an insurance company. This is true for the sad-sack protagonist of Pitfall, a gem of the genre directed by a guy called de Toth. John is stuck in the suburban life. Wife and kids, dinner after work. An organized little life. We, of course, realize that this seemingly settled rhythm will not last much longer. And it doesn't. There's the brazen Mack at the office who's attracted to a dame suspected of possessing some stolen goods. According to the rules of the genre John will fall in love with this dame himself - an afternoon of boats and cocktails pretty much settles the deal. The problem begin when it turns out that a colleague of his has already set his eyes on the girl - he does everything to hurt his competitor. Mona's jailbird boyfriend is also soon to be an ally of the colleague's. Interestingly, I don't really get the sense that Pitfall is a moral tale that teaches the viewer the value of not giving in to impulses that will shatter what makes up the real happiness of life. As have been said by others, this film departs from the tradition of depicting scheming femme fatales who seduces poor men and leads them towards a doomed path. In Pitfall, it is the protagonist that is spared, and the girl that falls in love with him meets a much more troubling fate.

Vive l'amour (1994)

Ming-liang Tsai is a very interesting director: his slow-building movies look at urban life from an angle that lets you see human fragility from a sort of cinematic distance. Vive l'amour is no exception in this respect. The ending scene of this film paradoxically exudes exactly this distance/bristling emotions. It's a strange thing to watch, indeed. There's a lot of other strange occurrences in this film. Let's start with the fact that the story revolves around an apartment which is shared by three people - and what is so eerie is that at first none of the people are aware of each other. There's the unhappy businessman who sneaks into the empty-seeming apartment. Then there's woman who takes a random guy, a guy who sells clothes on the street for a living, to the apartment for a rendezvous. She's some kind of broker and she is trying to sell this place. The guy she sleeps with steals her key and starts to move into one of the bedrooms... The loneliness of these people is painful to watch. The moments of intimacy are fleeting and often they only make the loneliness appear in even starker contrasts. Very few words are exchanged. It's the vacant-seeming apartment and its secretive inhabitants. The city is depicted as a place for an anonymous, unhappy life. A heartbreaking and very, very quiet movie.

A Brighter Summer Day (1991)

Edward Yang's A Brighter Summer Day is an extremely ambitious (237 minutes!) and well-directed movie about a transitional time in Taiwanese history. I can imagine this is one of the films that must have inspired Wong Kar Wai: it blends the wistful with the subdued. What characterizes this film is also the distance that is kept up at all time: this distance can be seen in the cinematography, in  the lighting and also in the way we are slowly, slowly introduced to characters.

The story takes place in the beginning of the sixties. The tense relation between gangs of teenagers - some of which are from mainland families - take a violent turn and one of the final eruptions of violence takes place in a seedy snooker bar. A wave of migrants came to Taiwan after the war that led up to the communist takeover. This film depicts a time of insecurity and state repression. The teenagers are heavily influenced by American pop culture and the music of the era plays a big - and moving! - role in A brighter summer day (the title comes from a snippet from a tune by Elvis). A tape recorder figures repeatedly as a treasured object, a center of gravity. Because of the bad copy I watched, there were some things I missed. Many scenes take place in scantily lit locations and there are a lot of long shots. This is also a context with which I am not that familiar. This is nonetheless a film I will bear with me.

The central event is the murder of a teenager. These bears witness of deep wounds within the community. Xiao Si'r is one of the main characters. His father is a civil servant, and he is also harassed by the secret police. Xiao Si'r and his brother steals their mothers watch and this comes to have fatal consequences. At night he attends school (!) where he meets Ming, a former girlfriend of one gangleader. Si'r is a steady part of one of the gangs. Yang weaves together accounts of family life and the life on the street. The film succeeds in showing how closed of these spheres of life seem to be from each other for these teenagers. The life of the family, the home, is one thing, the gang another. Rifts between generations are manifested in a way I found both subtle and illuminating. This is for sure a film that merits a second viewing. 

The Kid (1921)

I have seen embarrassingly few Charlie Chaplin movies in my life. The Kid is a good start - it is a brilliantly funny and moving film about a man - Chaplin's famous Tramp - who ends up a father. The man has found an abandoned child and despite his attempts to find the mother, there's nothing to do but to face responsibility. As the film moves on, the kid and the man are "business partners". The kid smashes a window and the father sells a new one to the unfortunate victim of this prank. What I couldn't stop thinking about during this film is how unusual its portrayal of masculinity is: the film shows a tender father's love for a child. Beyond this the film revels in street-smartness and acrobatic - and great locations!

El sur (1983)

Victor Erice's El sur is a masterpiece of colors and composition: it is simply a marvellous-looking and melancholy little film. Even though some plot-devices are badly chosen (maybe thsi is due to the fact that Erice was not able to finish the film the way he had planned), this is a film one will remember. It's one of those films that builds its own tight world. Most films, flat as they are, do not at all suceed in this world-making - and I suppose most don't even try. The story revolves around the relation between a dugther and her secretive father. The father comes from the south, and the girl dreams of this mysteroius place. The father is a man of many secrets, and the daughter tries to reveal what these secrets are. They live in a house far from the city. Sometimes, the father disappear without explanation. The daughter follows her father into town and she tries to make sense of what he does. El sur is a dreamy film that settles you into a landscape and a mood of longing. The emotions are more hinted at than rubbed into your face. The daugther gradually learns of her father's unhappiness.

Even though the mystery of El sur is not in itself extraordinary, the way it is evoked clearly is. In one memorable scene, we see Estrella dancing with her father at an empty restaurant. They are close, yet distant to each other. There is a sadness and wistfulness of this film that is both vivid and distand, as a dream that is about to dissipate. Someone has written that this movie is told in the tone of whispering, and that captures the essence of how I experienced the pace. There are countless scenes of stark beauty. Often these scenes are minimalistic in kind. In one, we see a dark-lit path surrounded by trees. Estrella is riding a bike and the gloomy light surrounds her. This scene is repeated in the film and creates a sort of pattern.

The Snows of Kilimanjaro (2011)

The Snows of Kilimanjaro (dir. Guédiguian) takes its departure from the reality of capitalism: there are lay-offs in the factory and among those laid off is Michel, a union man who lives with his wife and who plays tenderly with his grandchildren. He tries to cope with his new life and we start to think he is doing rather well. One night he is playing cards with a few mates. A pair of armed men break into the apartment and steal their money - Michel had some saved up for a trip they were about to make - and some belongings. After a while we realize that one of the robbers was a fellow workers. He has kids of his own. This is a movie that has its eye fixed on the everyday life of the main characters. Even when the rhytm of the everyday is broken by the robbery, life goes on. Guédiguian never lets the film slip into a sociological reports. Michel and his wife Marie-Claire are vividly portrayed characters. They are socialists, and they live a comfortable life. However, this is not a film in which Guédiguian sets out to ennumerate traitors of the working class. We see Michel and Marie-Claire through the eyes of the man who robbed them, a man who is far worse off than they are, and for whom these are two people who seem to have everything. The snows of Kilimanjaro reflects a sense for the fragility of life that I deeply appreciate. It is a story about forgiveness and hope and one could also say that it is a story about solidarity in a broken world. I am not sure whether the accusation of false consolation is accurate here. Even though the ending may have been a little too much on the sugary side, my general impression is that films like The Snows of Kilimanjaro are needed: I saw nothing false in the hope this film inspires.