THE CHILDREN ARE WATCHING US Review of a Vittorio De Sica Film

This film is an allegory for post-war Italians families with the message : get back on track with what’s important about family life; don’t make immoral decisions; be aware of the impact of your behavior on your children.  If you’re not able to stand up to the responsibility of parenting, then the church will take over for you.  It’s a classic Italian neorealist film put together by the famous director and screen writer Vittorio De Sica (who also made The Bicycle Thief, Umberto D, and the Garden of the Finzi-Contini).

Of course I thoroughly enjoy any film set in Rome, just because it is Rome.  Here we stroll through the Pincio, watch a puppet show, visit a dressmaker, sit back while the housekeeper serves us up a big bowl of soup, and even go to a condominium meeting. What surprised me was that the film was released in 1944

Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Uccellacci e uccellini: his father myth

Pasolini. Pier Paolo Pasolini. Why is he fascinating? Like other Italian intellectuals–or politicians–who you might put behind a podium or in front of a camera he is able to talk up a storm. (BTW: Italian politicians are known to go on for half days rather than hours). Theories. Politics. Right and wrong. Peasant values. Life. Religion. Police…He embodies what we are missing in the 2000s–a respected thinker. Instead we have celebrities who say little about the fabric of life but who are oft quoted on their food intake and love life. Much has changed in 40 years.

Along with being a prolific writer and a public intellectual, Pasolini was a mystic marxist catholic and atheist. The juxtaposition of all these elements, along with a keen intelligence and need to expose alternative sexuality and institutional hypocrisy, saturate his work.

Perhaps being a mystic was most important to him. In interviews he repeatedly spoke up for the need to deliver a mythological element to film. Back to Greek logos and mythos: logos gets too much air time.

Uccelacci and Uccellini embraces the complexity of Pasolini; completely pasoliniesque it is, in fact, a film that he has gone on record saying was his favorite. It is a comedy. It is a satire. It is a modern story that looks back on medieval times to gather momentum. It is an urban/rural clash story. It is a road-of-life story; a circular story. In the interview that accompanied the DVD, Pasolini said “I like to leave stories open…I choose everything.” Mostly Uccelacci and Uccellini is a father-son

Michael Powell Film Festival: Falling into the Widening Gyre

 

Turning. Turning Turning.

looking through a camera is like looking through the center of a vortex.

 

From who knows what realm of time, Michael Powell stepped into my circle.  Here’s how: independent of each other’s urging, three friends–Karin, Goshia and Jean–ordered a que full of his titles from Netflix and are simultaneously watching his films,most of which were made in the 40s. 

Funny, because the circle is Michael Powell’s point of entry.  

Watch the pre-credits: an archer’s circle; an arrow hitting the bull’s eye; an eye; an iris; a camera lens. The story begins, the circle having drawn in the viewer. 

The motion of swirling into a center, a center that threatens to swallow up the protagonist with madness, alcoholism, death, exhaustion, is

My Brother is an Only Child:AMERICANS DON’T MAKE FILMS LIKE THIS

Viewers would probably benefit by having a sense of Italy’s history– and the history of Italian cinema–to get a good grasp on the film. Otherwise, it may seem uneven and spotty. If you haven’t already,  I recommend watching Best of Youth, Fist in the Pocket, Bicycle Thief, Rocco and His Brothers, I’m Not Afraid and even Lina Wertmeuller’s Swept Away to put this film in context.

handsome fellows, aren't they?

Italian cinema has a tradition of basing their films on literature, classical drama, and political and intellectual concerns. As a cultural group, they are first to speak up about injustices of the status quo.  Such is the case with Mio Fratello e’Unico Figlio ( My Brother is an Only Child).

It is a story of a family living on the outskirts of Rome. In the 60s and 70s things were pretty rural in the town of Latino; excitement resided elsewhere–Rome, for example. Within the family, there is the Communist brother Manrico; a fascist younger brother Accio; and a Christian Democrat father.  The mother is work-worn and weary of living in government housing with walls that crack

CONVERSATIONS WITH EMILE DE ANTONIO

 

 

Art Brut filmmaker

Few filmmakers have consistently rattled America’s schemes as sharp-eyed as Emile de Antonio has.  By pushing to extract the poisons of Nixon, the media, Vietnam, Kennedy’s assassination, and the boggles in our political systems, from the 1960’s through 1989 he has created landmark documentaries about modern America.

His no-budget film about the Army-McCarthy hearings, Point of Order, became a favorite on the art-house circuit and established de Antonio as a principal voice in the counterculture.  

I interviewed  “D,” as he insisted everyone call him, several times in the mid-1980’s, first upon the independent release of his films to videocassette and later to collect information about men who marry five times or more.  I am using quotes from those interviews in this post.

Ugetsu: a Yin Yang Film

 

The concept of yin and yang describes the interconnectedness of opposites:  

Japanese Yin and Yang

for example, light an dark, male and female, contraction ( yin) and expansion ( yang). It applies as well to social constructions such as good and evil, rich and poor, honor and dishonor. Applied to life, the concept can be a warning about the consequences of living on the edge. Extreme good will turn to evil; extreme wealth to poverty; extreme honor to dishonor, and so on. In the dance of these interacting forces, the best spot to be is in the center because the center is balance, peace, well-being. Only in the center can creation take place; only in balance can a human being exist in the present moment, unburdened of future tasks and past regrets.

Of course in the unfolding of life there is constant interplay between yin and yang. Yang gathers. Yin disperses. The interplay guarantees growth

Love Story Jeans? How About Snow on the Love Story House

 

Every now and then–even 40 year after the fact–groups of Japanese tourists stop on Oxford Street in Cambridge to take pictures of the famous steps, threshold, and doorway of The Love Story house

Now there’s a jean style–”Love Story” put out by Seven for All Mankind. 

 

famous love story house of harvard lovers

The 1970 movie, “Love Story” starred  an artsy Ali McGraw and jock Ryan O’Neill as a lovestruck Harvard couple from different sides of the tracks. The moive–and the book–were tearjerkers with a saccharin tagline: love means never having to say you’re sorry.  

Down the block, Oxford Spa and the laundromat next to the spa were also in the movie and to this day have signs in their windows announcing their participation.

The Czech Republic Is the Star of this Film

Zelary (2004)

Who has peeked inside Czech Republic since the Oscar winning Kolya? This weekend we rented the movie a recent Czech film, Zelary (rhymes with celery).  The Czech Republic is the star; this film really shows her off: the mountains, wildflowers, colors of changing seasons, snow.

Miss Czech Republic

Zelary looks back, with nostalgia, on the transition between WW II Gestapo control of the country and the Russian takeover.  A short period of time existed between the two regimes. I can only imagine the impetus to make this film was for it to be a cultural reminder to the people of Czech Republic. It asks the big questions:  Who are we? Were did we come from? Where might we be going?

Short synopsis from metaphor point-of-view: Female sexuality

Amelia Earhart, Hillary Swank & Wild Dreams (10/23/08)

The Movie

THE MOVIE “AMELIA” COMES OUT 2009
Hilary Swank plays the title character, the legendary American pilot Amelia Earhart, who disappeared while flying over the Pacific Ocean in 1937 in an attempt to make a flight around the world. Ewan McGregor plays author Gore Vidal’s father, the great love of Amelia’s life. Richard Gere plays Amelia’s husband, publisher George Putnam. Virginia Madsen plays the ex-wife of Putnam, a Crayola Crayon heiress.

The Medford Public Library has a plaque dedicated to aviator Amelia Earhart. Carol Albright, editor of Italian Americana, and I are giving a reading this evening in the Medford Public Library. We’re reading from WILD DREAMS: THE BEST OF ITALIAN AMERICANA a compilation of the best of the best from the past 20 years of the journal. It just came out. Fordham University Press “Great American Literature” series.

Last year, while at the Medford Public Library for a lecture, I noticed a big plaque on the wall dedicated to Amelia Earhart and a big black and white photo of Earhart, with her flying googles draped around her neck. ( (WANT TO KNOW ABOUT HER SINUS PROBLEMS? GO TO YOU TUBE    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Gl4tgxGGxQ&feature=channel_page)

    

the Book

PIER PAOLO PASOLINI FILM: Teorema (from 10/7/08)

Pasolini

PASOLINI? A controversial , leftist journalist, philosopher, linguist, novelist, playwright, filmmaker, newspaper and magazine columnist, actor, painter and political figure.

In his film TEOREMA(Theorem, 1968) , in a final scene, we see the maid, Emilia, suspended in the sky above the casina– a row of farmhouses. The image smacks of Fellini’s imagine of the Virgin Mary at the beginning of the film LA DOLCE VIDA (1968): the Virgin statue hangs in the sky above Roman rooftops as a helicopter transports it over the crowded suburbs. Peasant vs. bourgeoise. Country vs. city. The sound of church bells vs. the noise of a helicopter engine. In both cases elevation of a woman, in both cases funny, in both cases not an intellectual question but rather a visual joke asking for the audience’s gut reaction. Like, “what’s going on?” The image breaks the narrative. In Fellini’s case setting up what is to follow; in Pasolini’s case, closing off what has already occurred.