Slow Moving Pictures

Station w tracks on either side of staircase going down w train schedule listed. Yellow phone booth beyond

Same exact shot w crowd heading down stairs and train on right side

Same shot. People gone. Woman enters phone booth. Train at right now

Sad w train pulling away and woman walking towards us

Watching Chantal Akerman watch.

Camera placed. Events stream by. These 4 random moments from first ~4 minutes of Les rendez-vous d’Anna

4.15-The Big House with Lewis Beer Today’s episode is my conversation about the 1930 film The Big House. I’m joined by Lewis Beer who writes the Slow Moving Pictures newsletter, and we talk about the key themes that weave throughout th...

Frances Marion called the Oscar statuette 'a perfect symbol of the picture business: a powerful athletic body clutching a gleaming sword, but with half of his head, the part that holds his brains, completely sliced off.’ Then she won an Oscar for The Big House. Someone should make a film about her.

What do flashbacks feel like? 'Flashbacks' are probably the most well-known symptom of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD). But what are they? PTSD UK describes flashbacks as "...

I see content warning discourse is back. This is my contribution: sarah-i-jackson.ghost.io/what-do-flas...

Hope you enjoy reading however much of it you can stand! It really hits its stride around Part 49...

I always think about my experience of teaching Titus Andronicus: once without content warnings (giggling, stony faces, no real analysis or reflection) and once with them (nuanced, in-depth, genuinely challenging discussion - including of the play's dark humour).

I appreciate it's difficult for artists who don't want to blunt the impact of their work. Ideally audiences could opt into or out of seeing content warnings. Personally I would opt out, but then again I've never thought, 'That was ruined by the content warning.' The benefit far outweighs the cost.

The 'safe space' created by content warnings is one where people can confront difficult topics honestly because they have opted in - they have agency. Otherwise, in my experience, they tend to bottle up their feelings and/or use defensive humour, resulting in an oppressive space and a boring one.

Balls.
I gave my students content warnings before films because I’ve seen what happens when I don’t and students would have panic attacks or worse in my room because of PTSD.

From Lemohang Mosese's This is Not a Burial, It's a Resurrection: a medium shot of Mantoa sitting on the edge of her bed; she is framed by blue drapes hanging on either side, and behind her is a dark blue wall.

The blue surfaces and fabrics in Mantoa’s bedroom (in This is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection) make an indelible impression on the viewer. This room is like a microcosm of the Plains of Weeping: the richly textured colours have so much history buried (and resurrected) in them.

“My friend, Pasolini says, we are demonstrating that facts are immaterial in fascism, that truth is dead, that meaning is on a permanent migration. I think we are engaged in honorable work.”

Olivia Laing on Danilo Donati, ‘the secret magician of Italian cinema’ Fellini and Pasolini’s favourite costume designer was a movie hero in his own right, says the novelist

Fellini and Pasolini’s favourite costume designer was a movie hero in his own right, says the novelist.
www.ft.com/content/4b2e...

That's a clever combination, the (deliberate) repetitiveness of that song would play well against the repeated tropes of prison movies.

Yes, though I think Barton understands: unlike him, Walter doesn't get a thrill out of investigating phony claims, he gets a thrill out of being on the other side of that equation. 'You know how it is Keyes...one night you get to thinking how you could crook the house yourself...'

a black and white photo of a man with a black eye and a beard . ALT: a black and white photo of a man with a black eye and a beard .

Yes, Frank Ross' collapse into paroxysms of pain in 'Each Dawn I Die' recalls the raw emotion of Cagney in several films; 'Taxi', 'The Crowd Roars', 'Angels With Dirty Faces', 'The Roaring Twenties & ,of course, the astonishing grief scene in 'White Heat;. The Irish in him!

Francis Ford Coppola's top choice for ‘Hyman Roth’ in THE GODFATHER: PART II (1974) was the great James Cagney.

Coppola even went to Cagney's house to discuss the role, but Cagney couldn’t be tempted, passed on it & of course it went to Pacino’s old acting teacher Lee Strasberg.

From William Keighley's Each Dawn I Die: a medium shot of James Cagney walking down a prison corridor, discreetly wiping away a tear with the edge of his hand, his eyes looking ahead with a tough, dark expression.

As he marches along the prison corridor, he wipes away a tear from each eye, gradually turning back into the hardened, self-assured version of himself he needs to be amongst his fellow inmates. But that inimtable Cagney strut is starting to falter - his resilience has a limit.

From William Keighley's Each Dawn I Die: a medium close-up of James Cagney chained to the bars of his solitary cell, yelling defiantly at the warden.

From William Keighley's Each Dawn I Die: a medium close-up of James Cagney as he receives a visit from his mother; unable to watch her cry, he clenches his eyes shut.

From William Keighley's Each Dawn I Die: a medium close-up of James Cagney, seen over George Bancroft's shoulder; he is unshaven and dishevelled after months in solitary; he bares his teeth furiously and jabs his finger at the warden.

From William Keighley's Each Dawn I Die: a medium shot of James Cagney breaking down during his parole hearing, clutching the table and sobbing violently as he cries, 'I can't do any more time!'

James Cagney in Each Dawn I Die: as an innocent man framed for manslaughter, he shows how integrity and a strong will are no match for relentless isolation and punishment. Cagney is best known for playing tough guys (on either side of the law), but he was also a consummate gibbering wreck.

Yes she 'underplays' it in just the right way, and you can see all that pent-up emotion behind her eyes.

From Martin Brest's Midnight Run: Jack (Robert De Niro) and the Duke (Charles Grodin) are in the house of Jack's ex-wife; Jack is trying to talk to his daughter (out of focus in the foreground), while the Duke gives them space and looks at his surroundings.

In this scene from Midnight Run, Robert De Niro conveys so much through his awkward small-talk with his daughter (‘Are you in the eighth grade?’), while Charles Grodin suggests the growing empathy between him and his captor by shutting up for a change and looking tactfully at the ceiling.

From Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity: Keyes (Edward G. Robinson) lights Walter Neff's (Fred MacMurray) cigarette as the latter lies sprawled out in an open doorway.

Look at the care and tenderness with which Edward G. Robinson lights Fred MacMurray’s cigarette. Double Indemnity is about the loneliness of its three central characters; it’s about those small moments (in between the snappy dialogue) when they express emotion without verbalising it.

From Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity: a medium close-up (over Walter Neff's shoulder) of Phyllis Dietrichson looking intensely into Walter's eyes, as she tries to explain why she 'couldn't fire that second shot.'

Phyllis Dietrichson, in Double Indemnity, is no ordinary femme fatale: beneath the scheming, evil exterior is a deeply lonely, vulnerable person who doesn’t know what she’s doing or why she’s doing it. Barbara Stanwyck plays both sides of the character with total conviction, and she breaks my heart.

From Carl Dreyer’s Mikaël (a.k.a. Michael): a medium close-up of Mikaël (Walter Slezak) holding a light, just out of frame, and looking towards the camera.

From Carl Dreyer’s Mikaël (a.k.a. Michael): a medium close-up of Countess Zamikow (Nora Gregor) looking from the illuminated painting towards Mikaël, her eyes directed downwards to the lower part of his body.

Carl Dreyer’s films are about bodies and how they interact through the medium of art. Mikaël shines a light on a painting of his own naked body; Countess Zamikow looks from the painting to his (clothed) body, but ‘sees’ what is beneath the clothes.

From Carl Dreyer’s Mikaël (a.k.a. Michael): a close-up of Nora Gregor, with the frame cut off from her nose downwards and blackness obscuring her hair, isolating her eyes and forehead.

From Carl Dreyer’s Mikaël (a.k.a. Michael): Walter Slezak, slightly out of focus as the camera dollies towards him, stands against a black void and reaches out of frame with his right hand to apply paint to a canvas.

Carl Dreyer’s films are about looking: he cuts off part of the frame to isolate Nora Gregor’s eyes, and gradually brings Walter Slezak into focus as his paintbrush replicates those eyes on a canvas. How do you show (to the viewer) the 'look' of another person?

From Carl Dreyer’s Mikaël: a medium shot of Claude Zoret, standing in front of his painting of Job (an old man on a desolate patch of land, prostrate on the ground and clutching his chest in agony).

A moment later, the light shining on Zoret has been switched off, leaving him in darkness, and the painting in the background has been brought into sharper focus.

Carl Dreyer’s films are about light and darkness. Benjamin Christensen stands, in focus, before his out-of-focus painting. Then the focus shifts, a shadow descends, and he is subsumed into the old man on the canvas: the painting shows his feelings more vividly than his 'real' self ever could.

From Carl Dreyer’s Mikaël (a.k.a. Michael): a close-up of Claude Zoret (Benjamin Christensen) lying in bed, his eyes wide and his mouth slightly open as he looks up at something; to his left, a shadow of his face is cast on the pillow.

Look at the shadow on the pillow in this shot: it echoes that expression-less head-sculpture, translating it from a blank-white space (the artist’s empty canvas, full of possibilities) into an ominous shadow (the inexpressible mysteries of love and death, which transcend art).

From Carl Dreyer’s Mikaël (a.k.a. Michael): a wide shot of Claude Zoret (Benjamin Christensen) shaking hands with his banker; they stand in an open doorway, and behind them, in Zoret’s studio, a huge white sculpture of a human head is mounted on a pedestal.

Who could forget the giant head-sculpture in Carl Dreyer’s silent masterpiece, Mikaël? No wonder this image resonated with a director so preoccupied with the power of a close-up: he loves to ‘enlarge’ the human head and examine its opaque surfaces.

Giuliana in Red Desert framed by industrial garbage as she searches for something in the distance along a massive red wall

Hulot in Playtime looking down into a grid of high wall cubicles with shut doors bordered by wide hallways, in effect a panopticon

Playtime (1967) and Red Desert (1965) were both intended as depictions of alienation from modernity, and are both regarded as visual masterpieces in their respective countries. They both are unintentionally but unavoidably statements about capitalism and environmental destruction.

Brendan Hodges on Yi Yi: 'Indebted to Antonioni’s cinema of alienation, Yang expands La Notte’s modernist maze of distorted bodies and faces across an entire cityscape. There’s an inherent loneliness to these city shots, but a quiet humanism too.'

'"I just didn’t think…." is a weak apology but in truth the most accurate explanation for my behavior.'

An eloquent summation of what this piece is about: ‘I just didn’t think…[because Rosamond Smith was doing the thinking].’ That last part is elided (...) because the other 'I' is talking now.

Monica Vitti, looking beautiful and bored in Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’AVVENTURA (1960).

There’s a Visconti retrospective on in Vienna, a newly restored Comencini in NYC, and the Harvard Film Archive will soon be screening films by Antonioni, Olmi, and Bertolucci — www.criterion.com/current/post...