Written in 2013 for a 2019 Taschen publication. — J.R.
Trafic
1. The Reluctant Return of Monsieur Hulot
“On the basis of my intentions, Trafic could have been shot before PlayTime,” Tati said to me in late 1972, when I met him for the first time, only a couple of weeks before Trafic opened in the U.S. And the reason why he felt that way about his fifth feature was directly related to his most famous character, Monsieur Hulot.
As far as his own intentions were concerned, Hulot was a character he had invented strictly for the purposes of a single feature, Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot. The main reason why he reappeared in Tati’s next three features was public demand. If it had been left up to Tati and his own inclinations, Hulot would have vanished after that one film, but the audience’s affection for that figure wouldn’t allow it; Hulot, after all, was better known and more familiar to the public than Tati himself was. So his creator reluctantly brought him back in Mon Oncle, and even gave him the title role a second time. But on this second occasion, one might say that Hulot existed again only as a function and contrast to the other characters — an eccentric relative of the Arpel family, and in some ways an alternative father figure for a little boy. Read more
Just posted on the website Con Los Ojos Abiertos (which literally means With the Eyes Open), Christmas 2018. (https://www.conlosojosabiertos.com/la-internacional-cinefila-2018-las-mejores-peliculas-del-ano/)
If I’d sent this in a bit later, I would have somehow managed to include A Bread Factory (Patrick Wang). — J.R.
Best Films:
The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles)
The Image Book/Le Livre d’image (Jean-Luc Godard)
Do You Wonder Who Fired the Gun? (Travis Wilkerson)
Roma (Alfonso Cuarón)
The eye was in the tomb and stared at Daney/L’oeil était dans la tombe et regardait Daney (Chloé Galibert-Laîné)
To varying degrees and in different ways, all 0f
of these films or videos are experimental,
which is also true of the two films found below.
Best debut feature: The Chaotic Life of
Nada Kadić (Marta Hernaiz Pidal, Mexico)
Best commercial film from the U.S.: A Simple
Favor (Paul Feig)
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From the Chicago Reader (November 1, 1991). — J.R.
Not exactly Josef von Sternberg in his heyday (1941), but still choice goods — a perverse dream bubble adapted by Sternberg, Jules Furthman, and others from a creaky but serviceable John Colton play about the madam of a Shanghai brothel (Ona Munson) taking revenge on a British official and former lover (Walter Huston) by corrupting his daughter (Gene Tierney). Victor Mature is also around, and surprisingly effective, as a decadent bisexual; other exotic cameos are doled out to Maria Ouspenskaya, Albert Bassermann, Eric Blore, Phyllis Brooks, and Mike Mazurki. Given the censorship of the period, much of the decadence is implied rather than stated. But Sternberg’s adept handling of claustrophobic space and sinister atmospherics made this melodrama an understandable favorite of the Surrealists, and the icy tone cuts through the funk like a knife. (JR)
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