Repulsion (1965)

*whimper*

Obsession (1976)

Set in New Orleans and Florence, De Palma's Obsession bears much in common, tonally, with the work of De Sica and some of the classically melodramatic Italian cinema of the 70's. The film is an open homage to Vertigo (1958), conceived by De Palma and written by Paul Schrader. Obsession really exists on its own unique plain of high drama. It's accompanied by a score that recalls Hitchcock, but exaggerates him as well, taking classic Hollywood scoring to an almost absurd level: in the opening of the film, a glimpse of a hidden revolver under a coat is accompanied by a massive orchestral sting.

The level of melodrama never really drops. It swirls and builds until, near the end of the film when the main character finds himself betrayed on a pier, he drops to his knees against the sunset letting out a "YEEEEAAAARRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!" for the ages. At this point, the viewer is completely on the film's wavelength: there is nothing humorous or absurd about it. Its really an interesting experience. Not many films do such experiments in tone. While this all may sound extremely self-conscious or tongue-and-cheek, its not. De Palma just creates an internal logic to the tone of the film, so it isn't really questioned after you adjust.

If all this doesn't win you over, how many films allow you to see a full-grown Geneviève Bujold, made child-size with camera tricks, quivering and screaming bloody murder at a stuttering, mustachioed, Southern-accented John Lithgow?

This is really underrated De Palma, very satisfying on most levels.

The Long Goodbye (1973)

In this deconstruction of the film noir, Altman applies thick layers of his usual cinematic devices: long takes, longer zooms, layering of characters and dialogue. While the sprawl in Nashville comes to much thicker of an emotional bludgeon, The Long Goodbye is content to remain cooler, just sprawl. Or so it would have you believe.

It truly is one of Altman's funnier films, as an excellent Elliot Gould smirks and quips his way as a 40's private eye lost in a 70's Los Angeles that has spiraled far beyond his relevance. The moments of shocking violence (particularly the moment dealt with a coke bottle) are matched equally with moments of total absurdity (a mind-bending, forced recreation of a high school locker-room). Both (as well as his nudist hippie neighbors) are lost on Altman's Marlowe who wanders, teflon-like, through a landscape beyond anyone's moral comprehension. The very genre of the film is underminded by it's setting. The ending is a pronounced judgement by one generation on another (perhaps by art on reality).

Lest we think this is all cynical moralizing, the real star of the film is Altman's camera. His affiliation (or lack of) with Hollywood seems to frequently disqualify him from serious film discussions, but it is hard to think of someone who investigated "cinematic space" more vigorously. Or at least its hard to see why he doesn't deserve a place with the best of them. Endlessly shooting reflections, zooming beyond characters far into the distance, losing all sense of dialogue in crashing waves and overpowering music. The experience of Altman's best is as much an experience of cinema as Tarkovsky or Godard.

Ugetsu (1953)

Kenji Mizoguchi's film has been called one of the treasures of world cinema. Notably, it has inspired great reverence in Jean-Luc Godard and Jacques Rivette, among others. Ugetsu is beautiful in its simplicity. Essentially a simple morality tale, it seamlessly combines the supernatural with the real through entrancing fluid camerawork and subtle, circular story-telling. No one really attempts this kind of filmmaking any more, and its interesting to see how this specific time and place (Japan in the 50's and 60's) was uniquely suited to do it so well.

Mizoguchi's filmmaking is so essentially Japanese and literary, that it is fascinating and joyful to watch even at its most sorrowful. With long takes and beautiful photography, Ugetsu communicates not only a very non-Western morality (to be over-simplistic: don't follow your dreams), but also becomes a meditation on the great impermanence of human existence. With very subtle, careful (and persuasive!) editing he assembles what could seem like a very disjointed story into a unified and balanced whole. Through some deft artistic choices, Mizoguchi emotively carries the viewer perfectly, priming and preparing him/her for each next moment. A foggy journey by boat is a beautiful, but silently disquieting bridge from one portion of film to another. As Miyagi is assaulted by soldiers, a harrowing moment seems to repeat itself endlessly, emotionally informing us of what is to come long before it is revealed to us. When the truth is revealed, after the peaceful segments that have preceded it, we are prepared, zen-like, for what has happened.

Orpheus (1950)

Jean Cocteau's second in the Orphic Trilogy is truly the best film of the three. Like the best of Cocteau's work, it has a strange purity and dazzling visuals. It leaves the surrealism of his earlier work for a more straightforward narrative style that, in the end, seems more surreal and magical than his early cinema (as enjoyable as it is).

Set in the present, Cocteau has a great deal of fun creating an unsettling but humourously bureaucratic Hades inhabitated by frightening, goggled death-police. Cocteau's lifting of the narrative from its mythological context allows it to become rather specific in its themes, dealing (like The Blood of a Poet) with the artist and his role in the world.

The best moments are the most unsettling. While the Princess of Death stalks over the body of Eurydice, her young poet assistant sets up an unearthly, flickering telegraph machine and begins to beam strange poetry into the radio of Orpheus's car.