Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site ucla-cs.ARPA Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!mhuxn!mhuxb!mhuxr!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!genrad!decvax!ittvax!dcdwest!sdcsvax!sdcrdcf!trwrb!trwrba!cepu!ucla-cs!reiher From: reiher@ucla-cs.UUCP Newsgroups: net.movies Subject: Obscure films Message-ID: <3744@ucla-cs.ARPA> Date: Wed, 6-Feb-85 02:22:37 EST Article-I.D.: ucla-cs.3744 Posted: Wed Feb 6 02:22:37 1985 Date-Received: Sat, 9-Feb-85 07:35:18 EST Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department Lines: 205 In an effort to get some discussions going in this newsgroup, other than the flurry of activity which occurs every time someone brings up a point of physics in regard to a science fiction film, I'll try to bring up a topic myself. Let's talk about obscure films. While we're at it, let's make it good obscure films. When I'm talking about obscure films, I don't mean "Buckeroo Banzai" or "Eraserhead". I'm talking hard core obscurity here, films that you've seen which you suspect almost no one else (at least in America) has. Stuff you catch at film festivals, or in university collections, or on one week releases disguised as cheap exploitation films. The purpose is to alert us fanatic filmgoers about movies we should be watching for. If it only played briefly once, it's not likely to be around long any subsequent times. While, cinematic omnivore that I am, I'm interested in almost any curiosities out there, I'd say that good films are of more general interest than mere oddities. To start things off, I've listed a dozen films that I've seen that are definitely worth looking for, and are definitely not easy to find. Some are classics, some are just entertaining films. I recommend all of them. "Tree of Knowledge" This Danish film is almost certainly not an obscurity to those net folks in the Scandanavian countries, but is completely unknown in the US. It's one of the best films I've ever seen, and is definitely the best film about children I've seen. Nils Malmros, the director, follows a group of adolescents as they grow up. The story is fictional, but we see actual children growing up, as the film was shot over a considerable period of time. The story concerns a young girl who initially is very popular, but, for the kind of obscure reasons only comprehensible to children, becomes almost an outcast. Malmros' insight into childhood is extraordinary, making Speilberg's supposed rapport with children look superficial and careless. This film, which has only been shown publically 3 times in the US, to my knowledge, is not to be missed under any circumstances. "Beauty and the Beast" This was the film that proved to me that Nils Malmros was not a fluke, but a genuinely talented director. One or two more films of this quality and I'll call him a genius. Not yet another version of the fairy tale, this Danish film concerns a father who is upset by his young daughter's choice of boyfriends. With the mother in the hospital, there is nothing to check his combined feelings of paternal concern for his daughter's wellbeing and his jealousy that she is no longer his alone. His overreaction causes more damage than would have been done if he had just left things alone. Again, Malmros' insight, this time into parents as well as children, is extraordinary. Not as good as "Tree of Knowledge", but also not to be missed. "The Saragossa Manuscript" People sometimes ask me what the best film I've ever seen is. That's a hard question that I don't have an answer for. I do know, however, what my personal favorite film is, and it's "The Saragossa Manuscript". This Polish fantasy-adventure is tremendously entertaining. It's got almost everything: heroic adventurers, beautiful maidens, villains, knaves, wizards, ghosts, demons, Arabian princesses, duels, battles, cuckolds, lovers, mysteries, castles, caves, magic, and humor. Told in the manner of the Arabian Nights, one story leads to another, like a set of Chinese boxes, one nested in the another. No matter how many levels deep within stories you are, you can expect to hear a character say, "Let me tell you a story." What's really fascinating is when stories at different levels start interacting. Recursion gone mad (which makes this the perfect movie for computer scientists). "The Saragossa Manuscript" (in Polish and black and white, its only two potential drawbacks) is shown about once a year in Los Angeles. I don't know if it's ever been shown anywhere else in the US. Don't pass up any of the few opportunities you may get to see this film. "Raggedy Ann and Andy" Now we leave the realm of unknown great films for unknown good films. "Raggedy Ann and Andy" is a perfectly good animated film which disappeared without trace upon release. It shows up occasionally on TV, usually at times when only children are expected to be watching. The animation isn't extraordinary, but it's good. There are some nice (if not really special) songs. The characters and their adventures are interesting. I particularly liked a gluttonous monster which is continuously gobbling sweets and which sets it greedy eyes on Raggedy Ann's famous candy heart. "Raggedy Ann and Andy" is several steps short of a classic, but it certainly deserves more attention than it got. "Heaven's Gate" Before you all shout "What! Not that infamous flop!", wait a minute. How many of you saw "Heaven's Gate"? Raise your hands high, it's hard to see you over data communications lines... I thought so, almost none of you. Well, "Heaven's Gate" probably received the most undeserved hatchet job critics have ever given a film, at least since the French writers unanimously dumped on Renoir's "Rules of the Game". "Heaven's Gate" isn't a masterpiece, but it's a solid, entertaining piece of work. The performances by the large and distinguished cast (Kris Kristofferson, Isabel Adjani, Sam Waterston, Christopher Walken, Jeff Bridges, John Hurt, Brad Dourif, etc.) are all first rate, in a few cases the best work the performers have ever done. The film looks like it cost a lot, and is beautifully photographed. The action sequences are very nicely done and quite exciting. The political position is rather simple minded, but when has Hollywood been the bastion of political evenhandedness? Given the chance (somewhat hard to come by), see "Heaven's Gate", particularly if you can see the original, 3 1/2 hour version. "Macbeth" (full length Orson Welles version) Two versions exist of Orson Welles' "Macbeth": Welles' original cut and what got released. The latter shows on late night TV every so often, and isn't anything special. The former was recently (two years ago) reconstructed by UCLA, and has been shown two or three times. What's the difference? Well, besides about twenty minutes more footage overall and the use of moderately heavy Scottish accents, the cutting of the Welles version is radically different, and definitely better. The most obvious example is the murder of Duncan. The release version is a fairly standard way to shoot this. The original version is a single long take without any cuts (but with *lots* of camera movement) that lasts as long as the reel in the camera. (According to the story, there were about 10 feet or so left in the magazine when Welles said "Cut".) Alfred Hitchcock tried this sort of thing at great length in "Rope". Welles did it a lot better. "Macbeth" was shot for Republic studios on a very low budget (Republic's big star was John Wayne, and we have Republic to thank for the dubious stardom of Vera Hruba Ralston.). It shows, but so does Welles' genius. "Way Down East" D.W. Griffith doesn't get shown too much. For that matter, silent films in general get very little exposure, and most of what is shown is Chaplin and Keaton. Silent films have an undeserved reputation for being stiff and melodramatic, mostly among those whose exposure to them has taken place exclusively in Shakey's Pizza Parlors. Well, "Way Down East" *is* melodramatic, and even stiff in places. In other places, though, you cannot deny the genius of the first master of the screen. Nowhere is this more evident than in the incredible waterfall sequence. Lillian Gish (in a superb performance) has passed out on an ice flow which breaks off from the river bank and rushes towards a waterfall. Can Richard Barthelmess leap from iceflow to iceflow to save Gish? Normally, this question should really be posed in terms of their standins doing it in studio recreation of a river. In this sequence, the real stars did most of it, and it was a real river with real ice flows and a real waterfall. Gish's hand is really trailing in the freezing water and Barthelmess really almost panics as he barely manages to jump to the next ice flow. Over fifty years later, this sequence is still one of the finest, most exciting action montages ever put on film. The film containing it is a perfectly good little melodrama in its own right. "I Was Born, But..." A splendid Japanese film from the 1930s. A pair of boys come to grips with the realities of the adult world. They can dominate another boy, but that boy's father is the boss of their father... An excellent film about the compromises we must make while growing up, and a reminder that there was a great deal more than the code of the samurai in pre-war Japan. Fleischer cartoons: "Bimbo's Initiation", "Swing You Sinners", "Minnie the Moocher", and "Snow White" Max and Dave Fleischer surely must rank high in the pantheon of surrealists. Their cartoons are bizarre and intensely imaginative. "Bimbo's Initiation" is perhaps the closest thing to a D&D adventure I have seen on screen, as Bimbo runs through a terrifying gauntlet of tests but remains adamantly against joining a wierd secret society ("Wanna be a member? Wanna be a member?" "No!"). "Swing You Sinners" finds Bimbo in a graveyard after dark; the entire graveyard, walls, trees, tombstones, ghosts, and all, come to get him. "Minnie the Moocher" has Betty Boop and Bimbo running away to a haunted cave, where they encounter Cab Calloway rotoscoped as a spectral walrus (a spectral walrus?!?) singing about Minnie and her coke fiend boyfriend. "Snow White", predating the Disney version by five years or so, is a lightning quick tour through the fairy tale culminating in Koko the Clown being transformed into a long legged ghost and, in Cab Calloway's voice, singing "Saint James Infirmary". These cartoons make sense in a nightmarish way, but have the feel of only being fully comprehensible to those at least slightly mad. Any or all of these are worth going out of your way to see, and are worth the price of admission even if what they're showing with is a turkey. "The Southerner" If you've seen any of the recent farm movies, try to see "The Southerner" and watch Jean Renoir blow them all away. No film before or since has better portrayed the life of a farmer on the edge, his trials and his joys. Zachary Scott, whose career rapidly went downhill, is absolutely superb in the lead. Renoir was asked how he could possibly know so much about the character of American Southern farmers. He said that he knew nothing of the American South, but that he knew peasants intimately, and that their plights were little different from France to Alabama. Renoir was responsible for four or five absolute masterpieces and a dozen or so great films. "The Southerner", almost never shown, is one of the masterpieces. "Vampyr" Almost any Carl Dreyer film turns out to be obscure. "Day of Wrath" has shown twice in LA in six years, "The Passion of Joan of Arc" once, "Ordet" once, "Gertrude" once, and "Vampyr" once. "Vampyr" isn't the best of these, but I have reason to beleive it is the rarest. Almost a silent film, "Vampyr" is an eerie, unsettling film unwinding in the atmosphere of a fever dream. Repetitious, puzzling, irritating, fascinating. "Alice in the Cities" Wim Wenders is a picaresque artist in the classic sense. His characters are always travelling somewhere, and it is the trip itself, not the destination or the purpose that is important. There are two trips in "Alice in the Cities". First, Rudiger Vogler travels across some of the less prepossessing parts of America on an abortive photojournalistic quest. Then, returning to Europe, he is left in possession of a little girl who he must take to her grandmother. But she only remembers the vaguest details about where her grandmother lives. Vogler and the girl travel from city to city in Germany, seeking the exact house Alice remembers. A very satisfying film. Well, there are twelve rather obscure films, counting the Fleischer cartoons as one. I personally know only two other people who have seen any of these, to my knowledge. (I've had net correspondence with another fan of "Heaven's Gate", as well.) I'm interested in hearing other people's opinions of these films, if they've seen them, but more interested in hearing about other obscure pictures I should watch for. Speak up, net! -- Peter Reiher reiher@ucla-cs.arpa {...ihnp4,ucbvax,sdcrdcf}!ucla-cs!reiher