Peter Reavy’s blog

I more or less enjoyed the DVD of The Short Films of David Lynch. The films on it are:

• Six Figures Getting Sick (Six Times)
  • This is very short. A sort of painting animated on loop. It reminded me of Duchamp’s Large Glass. You can see that something is happening according to a set of rules, but you don’t know what the rules are. So, although it’s crude, it certainly has something of latter-day Lynch.
• The Alphabet
  • Quite imaginative combinations of live action and animation. Unsettling, but slightly pointless.
• The Grandmother
  • Clearly he’s headed for Eraserhead at this point with the creepy, organic model of the embryonic grandmother looking very like the Baby.
• The Amputee
  • Notable for mainly for Lynch’s taste in dialogue, as very little happens on screen. But there wasn’t much talking at all in his films until this point, and the dialogue here could just as easily have cropped on in Inland Empire.
• The Cowboy and the Frenchman
  • At this point, we leave the early work behind, for this half-hearted effort from 1988.
• Premonitions Following an Evil Deed
  • Lynch’s 1 minute contribution to Lumière et compagnie is imaginative within a very narrow brief. It repays multiple viewings.

The films are greatly enriched by watching Lynch’s introductions to each one. Since I am interested in his thoughts and creative process, I enjoyed the DVD, but it would not make a great introduction to David Lynch. Next on my list is likely to be Eraserhead, which I have not seen for many years.

In Lynch’s more recent work, he has become superb at creating a certain uncanny atmosphere. This is one of his great strengths but doesn’t seem to be present at all here. I wonder where the earliest example of it occurs.

(ASIN: B000CQM2WQ)

Yesterday Bergman, today Antonioni.

I watched The Passenger for the first time a couple of weeks ago. The FT obit seems not to rate it, but I enjoyed it more than I expected to. Great Nicholson performance. No sequence in it is quite as mind-blowing as the end of The Eclipse but it is easy to watch, due to a good plot.

I went to see my first Shane Meadows film, This Is England. After ten or fifteen minutes, I was starting to write the film off, since it seemed rough and ready in terms of editing or the way the scenes were staged. But despite this amateurishness, the story grabbed me.

You would think that this film would stand or fall on its realism, but it doesn’t. In some ways it is a mis-remembered 80s. It remembers every single teenager as dressing in perfect 80s fashion, whether New Romantic or Mod. It also hits the wrong note in places. It can seem far too 2007. But it captures how it felt to be a teenaged boy in the 80s.

This is England is a strange, awkward and nostalgic film, but it expresses the distance between then and now, and is worth seeing.

One of the Guardian’s critics, for some reason, watched every single Ingmar Bergman film. I felt like I had too before I’d finished reading his conclusions. Once you start thinking of a film-maker like Bergman as formulaic, then it seems pointless to watch more than a handful of his films and since I already have, he’s not on my rental list at the moment.

I watched Robert Bresson’s take on the Joan of Arc story. It was such a disappointment that I wondered why I’d liked his other films. Googling it, I see comparisons between his film and Carl Dreyer’s on the same subject. It seems a bit unfair to lump them in together just because they’re old foreign films in black and white, but there you go.

Anyway, Dreyer’s film moved me, Bresson’s film didn’t. I prefer A Man Escaped and L’Argent followed by Balthazar and Mouchette. Those would make you think that Bresson is one of the greatest directors. But Procès de Jeanne d’Arc is a dud to throw in with Lancelot du Lac.

Quick thoughts on some films I’ve seen in the last couple of months.

Inland Empire

For me, David Lynch’s two truly great films are Blue Velvet and Mulholland Dr. In his latest, he breaks new ground, although at times it seems almost a pastiche of an experimental film. Only time will make more sense of this effort. I wouldn’t have missed it, though. It’s quite an experience.

A Cock & Bull Story

This noble attempt doesn’t quite come off, I don’t think. It’s really well-made, but just doesn’t have the depth of the book. It has the spirit of the book, but not the same sense of humour. In truth I only made it halfway though Tristram Shandy, but I still got more from it than I did from this film.

Art School Confidential

I loved the look of this film and it opens very well. It becomes extremely clever towards the end and unfortunately a bit over-ambitious. It almost made me think it was a thought-provoking film, but there is something not quite convincing about the plot. I’ll watch this again at some stage, because I like the setting.

King of Marvin Gardens

Perhaps the most thoughtful character I’ve seen Jack Nicholson portray. After watching Inland Empire, I was really keen to see Laura Dern’s father, Bruce, in this. I can’t quite rave about The King of Marvin Gardens but at the same time it deserves its reputation as a key film of its period, even if just to soak up the Atlantic City atmosphere.

In Her Shoes

Curtis Hanson directs. Great cinematography by Terry Stacey, who I assumed must also have shot Wonder Boys (one of my favourites), but apparently not, though I see he did do the honours for the entertaining American Splendor. A well-paced 2 hours, which doesn’t drag, and is only a teeny bit sentimental.

This archived Tyler Cowan article examines the damage done to the French film industry by protectionism. It seems very likely that he is correct. One snippet of hope:

Eric Rohmer, the French director of such popular art house comedies as My Night at Maud’s and Claire’s Knee [...] perceives Hollywood as a danger, but he is not a cultural protectionist. As he told The New York Times, “I say to people, `I am a commercial film maker’….I am not supported by the state; I am for free competition.”

There aren’t many like him.

I liked Rohmer’s film, The Lady and the Duke. It was controversial in France since it was set during, but sceptical of, the Revolution.

I managed to catch most of the science fiction writer Brian Aldiss’s appearance this morning on the revitalised Desert Island Discs. I am not familiar with his work. (I think I read one of his novels years ago, but all that sticks in my mind was that in this particular future, men had full conscious control of their erectile tissues. This novel was written before the discovery of Viagra.)

Anyway, he chose a couple of good records.

• a tune sung by Walter Brennan, considered one of the great character actors, and known to me for his part in Howard Hawks films and skill in manipulating his false teeth. I didn’t realise Walter Brennan ever sang on record.
• Borodin’s In The Steppes Of Central Asia. I was listening to the same excellent recording myself last week (Gergiev on Philips).

No Listen Again for this programme, but at least they archive the choices.

He also gave a writing tip given to him from Agatha Christie. Write your crime novel without knowing the name of the murderer yourself. Before writing the final chapter, decide which character is the least likely to have dunnit. Just go back through the book and make any necessary small changes to train timetables, etc, before you finally reveal them at the end.