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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