Showing posts sorted by relevance for query second run. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query second run. Sort by date Show all posts
8 August 2011
24 November 2012
The Czechoslovak New Wave: A Collection DVD Review
Second Run has released a limited-edition three-disk set, The Czechoslovak New Wave: A Collection, which features three films from the 1960s: Diamonds of the Night (Jan Němek, 1964), Intimate Lighting (Ivan Passer, 1965) and The Cremator (Juraj Herz, 1968). The Czech New Wave was a very brief episode in European cinema that is probably best known for the fact that Milos Forman came out of it (Forman later directed One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Amadeus).
During the short five-year period from 1963 to 1968, the finest films of this movement were very much influenced by surrealism or were, conversely, very light comedies. It’s a strange mixture but it works. This box set is a good introduction to both sides of this dichotomy. Diamonds of the Night is an almost silent film about two teenage boys who take a train from one concentration camp to another. There is a spell-binding tracking shot that follows the boys as they escape the train, which goes on for at least three minutes. After their escape, the rest of story is told through fragmented memory and fantasy sequences of before they were captured, their capture, escape and re-capture. It was based on a then-unpublished survivor’s book: in the true story, the person was captured and escaped three times and had no memory of how he made his final escape.
Intimate Lighting is the “worst” film of the collection, but only because the other two are so much better. It is a light comedy about a group of classical musicians who are in a house rehearsing for an upcoming concert performance, and concerns their interactions with each other. Director Ivan Passer is better-known for his early collaborations with Milos Forman, whose early films he wrote, but he also directed the fantastic neo-noir Cutter’s Way (1981). His directing career seems to have taken off much more in America than in Czechoslovakia: most of his films have been in English.
The Cremator is quite possibly the best film in the collection. It follows a professional cremator in Nazi-occupied Prague. He becomes increasingly deranged, and then gets involved with the Nazis. It is a black comedy: a surreal and unsettling film with a great performance by Rudolf Hrusínský, who resembles an Asian Peter Lorre (although he is not, in fact, Asian.) This film has some of the most impressive use of fish-eye lens shooting in cinema, right up there with Citizen Kane and Seconds, as well as some truly astonishing tracking shots and angles, and imagery that will never leave you.
The director Juraj Herz was a puppeteer and animator before becoming a filmmaker, making him an outcast amongst the Czech New Wave crowd as he had not attended film school with the rest. This background gave him a surrealist animator’s look at film. The dvd also an introduction by the Brothers Quay. The Cremator really must be seen to believed it’s indescribable.
Overall, the box set is a very good value for money: two excellent films and one good one. After the failed Czech Uprising of 1968, the majority of New Wave filmmakers left Czechoslovakia, some going to America and others to Europe. Once you’ve watched these, it would also be worth having a look at Cutter’s Way to see how practices that originated in the Czech New Wave impacted American film. Interesting, the director of Diamonds of the Night has recently stated making low-budget/no-budget digital films that hearken back to the experimental nature of this early work, so the story does not end here.
Ian Schultz
Diamonds of the night (15)
Intimate Lighting (PG)
The Cremator (15)
★★★★★
Directed By: Jan Nemec, Ivan Passer, Juraj Herz
Cast: Rudolf Hrusínský, Vlasta Chramostová , Zdenek Bezusek, Karel Blazek, Ladislav Jánsky,
Buy: The Czechoslovak New Wave - A Collection (3 Film Box Set) [DVD]
26 September 2012
Casa De Lava DVD Review
Casa de Lava (called Down to Earth on it’s US relase) is a film made by noted Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa. It was his 2nd film and a very loose remake of Val Lewton/Jacques Tourneur’s I walked with a Zombie. It stars Isaah de Bankolé best known to western audiences with his many collaborations with Jim Jarmusch with films such as The Limits of Control and Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai.
The plot is basically an immigrant worker Leaõ in Portugal falls into a coma. A young depressed nurse Mariana has to get Leaõ back to his home in the volcanic Cape Verde islands. Nobody is willing to claim Leaõ and so this stuck on the island. She starts interacting (partly in hope of finding a relative) with the strange locals and is drawn into mysterious community of the volcanic island. She starts a relationship that never goes anywhere with a local, she seems to be more and more connected to Leaõ. Leaõ also eventually wakes up but is just a stranger in his own land. Many of the inhabitant’s wishes to make the journey to Portugal out of financial need because of Portugal’s colonisation of the island.
My biggest problem with the film is I just wish it were a total zombie film and not try be a zombie film without zombies. The Zombie film was always political and yes the people are of the island are kinda zombies and dead in a way. It however would have been more enjoyable if they were actual zombies. There are numerous shots of the volcanoes that are beautiful but they linger and linger and just bored the hell out of me eventually.
It has an interesting film about the colonisation of islands in Africa by the Portuguese in it for about 20 minutes. It however left be cold and I didn’t care at all about the characters, it left me unengaged with the characters. It was all done very realistically and I would have preferred a supernatural twist (instead of the metaphorical zombie), which Costa originally planned to do, as evident on the bonus interview on the Second Run DVD.
Ian Schultz
Rating:15DVD Re-release Date: 24th September 2012(UK)
Directed by: Pedro Costa
Cast: Inês de Medeiros, Isaach De Bankolé, Edith Scob, Pedro Hestnes
Buy Casa De Lava: DVD[1994]
5 April 2018
13 April 2014
13 September 2012
Innocent Sorcerers DVD Review
is the first non-War film Andrzej Wajda did coming soon after his much-celebrated War Trilogy in the 1950s and the much lesser known Lotna (which is also a war film). It was a radical departure from his previous WW2 films, it was then contemporary film about young people in Warsaw.
The
film tells the story of a young mod (in the original sense, young person who
listens to Modern Jazz) called Andrzej (played by
Tadeusz Łomnicki) who is a physician who is a bit of playboy. He plays drums
in a jazz band on the side. He is getting fed up of his film sexual successes.
He meets a lovely young girl and they spend the night at his place talking, it
has obvious sexual tension though out the night.
The film was
supposedly more the brainchild of the screenwriter Jerzy Skolimowski much more
so they Wajda. It’s very much a part of the overall 60s new wave of cinema,
every country pretty much had their own and Poland certainly had it’s with most
famously Roman Polanski (who has a bit part), Wajda and others.
Ian Schultz
Rating:12DVD Re-Release date:10th September 2012(UK)
Directed by: Andrzej Wajda
Cast:Tadeusz Lomnicki, Krystyna Stypulkowska, Wanda Koczeska, Roman Polanski
1 January 2012
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