You’re welcome! I think this Meditation Technique is really cool for discussion.
Now how did those two identical scenes impact you? What different effects did they produce? Or was the impact the same with each scene?
One of my favorite war movies and favorite war movie themes. The main title and theme are nicely recreated here in HD. Makes me feel like I could run through a dam:
Hope and Glory is a still a good movie, it just doesn’t have the long term resonance that puts Empire of the Sun near the top of my list. As we are all slightly different tuning forks, our resonances vary. I’d like to hear what you think of if when you get around to watching it again.
“That was a googly! I taught him how, and now he turns it against me!”
I’ll definitely let you know.
I love that quote. My college roommates and I used to say, “That was a wicked googly!” in a variety of social situations that involved surprise. Yeah, it’s not an actual line from the movie, but we got the concept there, because we really liked the movie and the accent was fun for the in-joke.
Later Seinfeld used it in some commercial, which was pleasing as well.
Me and my movie-nerd posse. It’s amazing we ever got girlfriends.
-xtien
“It’s like telling lies.”
A Super Bowl commercial I think? I’m not going to google googly again.
I’m gobsmacked to see that Abel Gance made Austerlitz in 1960. He made the great silent epic Napoleon in 1927. (His directing career was roughly the same time scale as Alfred Hitchcock’s.)
Army of Shadows is a punishing movie. There are scenes in it that are hard to watch, and some that seem interminably long. (The Resistance fighter’s night flight to England feels like it’s taking place in real time.). By the end you get a sense of what it was like for these men and women to live lives of constant fear and desperation. I’ve never seen anything like it.
Nobody has mentioned The Beast, Kevin Reynolds’s second movie, an intense, claustrophobic, uneasy movie about a Soviet tank crew in Afghanistan. It’s a little didactic (the tank’s crew is like people rounded up for a panel discussion on the subject “Why Are We In Afghanistan?”), but on the other hand Hollywood hasn’t made a whole lot of movies showing this war from the perspective of the USSR.
I don’t think anyone mentioned Charlie Wilson’s War either, an okay movie that is totally overshadowed by Philip Seymour Hoffman’s fantastic performance as a spy who’s been benched.
Confidential to @divedivedive: Seek out “The Pity Card,” a 12-minute comedy directed by Bob Odenkirk. It starts out with a first date even more awkward than yours, and then it gets even weirder. It’s not clear why Zach Galifinakis is in this, but he’s great.
It’s on my to-watch list, and it really sticks in my craw that I haven’t seen it yet, despite several instances of insisting that, "Yeah, it’s gonna happen, this weekend, no doubt’. I have seen everything else in Melville’s Oeuvre, for god’s sake. It’s time.
Kick in the pants with Austerlitz, huh? Jack Palance and Orson Welles are in it too…
Cannon to right of them
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of hell
Rode the six hundred.
If you like authenticity in war films, one I strongly recommend is Pursuit of the Graf Spee aka The Battle of the River Plate. Filmmakers undertaking naval battle movies in the pre-CGI era basically had two choices: use models (see Sink the Bismarck for a good example) or real ships. Real ships were used for this movie, which gave the film a very authentic overall look, but naturally necessitated certain compromises. The biggest problem was that, after the war, no ship afloat even resembled the German pocket battleship Graf Spee. The filmmakers did the best they could by securing the services of the U.S. Navy heavy cruiser Salem to stand in for the German ship. The Navy’s cooperation, however, only went so far. The Salem was an active, commissioned Navy vessel, so its U.S. Navy hull number is quite visible on the ship’s bow in the movie. The script attempts to explain this be stating that the ship was disguising itself for commerce raiding purposes. Also the “German” sailors wear U.S. Navy '50s-era combat gear throughout the film.
These details, however, are only really bothersome to a military history geek like me. I highly recommend this as one of the few good films available about the surface war in the Atlantic.
So I watched Army of Shadows by Jean-Pierre Melville this last weekend…and I needed some time before I felt I could intelligently comment on it.
Beware, Here Be Spoilers!
Color
So one of the things I noticed immediately was that the color Melville used was very bleached out, very drab and grey. Let’s see two frames below, one early on in the internment camp in Vichy and one later in London.
Vichy France
London
London looks absolutely Luminescent compared to France. Obviously we are seeing a Tale of Two Cities, metaphorically. An occupied France bereft of color and life, and a London that, while at war, is still vibrant.
Languid Tension, Matter of Fact Action
Melville’s action just happens. No musical cues, no visual set-ups. No foreshadowing. Guns are shot or people killed. People flee. There is no camera usage or editing to enhance any of these scenes. By using this technique, Melville creates a narrative that is truly unpredictable. Anything can happen. The audience doesn’t know what is coming, but not in a shell-shocked way.
Running from the Machine Guns
In fact the most implausible escape was literally unbelievable. In the scene where Gerbier is running from the machine guns (a planned SS execution) and ultimately is rescued, I was almost convinced that the sequence was the dream of a man in death like An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. The combination of matter of fact action with the implausible becoming plausible all of a sudden created, in retrospect, a tension so taut, that the resolution for me was literally unbelievable, in the moment.
Beyond the Ticking Clock
An example of the languid tension I mentioned is this scene, where we wait (and wait and wait and wait) after Gerbier mentions to the other detainee that “Now is our chance, I’ll distract he guard and you run”. He says that. And then we wait longer than in any other film I have seen for the resolution of that statement. To the point where I doubted that there would be a resolution. “Maybe the other guy thinks he is crazy, or is too scared to do anything? Maybe he is a collaborator and just waiting, and will report Gerbier when he sees whoever they are waiting to see.” All leading up to the street chase and the shaving scene @ChristienMurawski alluded to in his earlier comment. The shaving scene had more literal, conventional tension and suspense in it that any other scene in the film, possibly. It was also clipped and quick, not languid.
Internal Security, Everyone Dies, The Myth of Resistance
In terms of content and history, what I found fascinating was that as Melville portrayed the resistance, they did smuggle downed pilots out of country, but spent most of their time securing supplies and resources and eliminating internal security threats. Contrasted to, say, Is Paris Burning? where the Resistance seized Paris to potentially prevent the city’s destruction. Melville is saying, “This was a squalid, dirty little business, where a lot was sacrificed for little gain. And a lot of morally questionable things were done. And they all die”
Oh, and every resistance member the audience meets dies, or will die. Period.
The Car with the Four Who Will Die in the Last Shot
Melville is chipping away at the French Gaullist post-War myth of resistance; that the French liberated themselves. According to Melville the Resistance spent all its time struggling to even exist.
All very historical takes, in respect to the big picture of what the resistance did in France.
The Film was a revelation, and I need to see it again in a few months. Previously, I’d seen Le Silence de la Mer, Le Samouraï, & Le Cercle Rouge by Melville. This had much in common with all three, but the use of matter of fact action and languid pacing to build tension really was used to extremes here and to unique effect, in my opinion. Anyone interested in Film or History owes themselves a viewing.
Couldn’t agree more. I’ve never seen anything like it.
You should see Bob le Flambeur as soon as you can. It’s wonderful.
The Friendly Fire podcast is absolutely fucking fantastic.
It is now among my favorite items of entertainment across everything that’s available.
To put in context how much I love this show, I’ve actually re-listened to a couple episodes, something I haven’t done for any form of entertainment in likely years.
Recommended.
Yay!5