Month: May, 2009
Sun 31 May 2009
Knife in the Water
Category: Janus Challenge
1 Comment
Director: Roman Polanski
Country: Poland
Year: 1962
“Polanski’s work might be seen as an attempt to map out the precise relationship between the contemporary world’s instability and tendency to violence and the individual’s increasing inability to overcome his isolation and locate some realm of meaning or value beyond himself.”J. P. Telotte, FilmReference.com
BACKGROUND
Roman Polanski was born in Paris in [...]
Sun 24 May 2009
Kind Hearts and Coronets
Category: Janus Challenge
1 Comment
Director: Robert Hamer
Country: United Kingdom
Year: 1949
BACKGROUND
As always, the Criterion essay and Wikipedia articles seem to have it all covered, and I’m stuck trying to re-shape that info into my own, less interesting, prose. Well, to start off, here’s an excerpt from a high school report card for Robert Hamer, director of today’s film: “His apparent [...]
Sun 17 May 2009
Jules and Jim
Category: Janus Challenge
3 Comments
Director: François Truffaut
Country: France
Year: 1962
BACKGROUND
I’ve already told you about Truffaut, right? A tart-tongued film critic who regularly denounced the state of French cinema? Who eventually stepped up to the plate with The 400 Blows and knocked it out of the park on his first at-bat? At the age of 27? Right, so we don’t need [...]
Sun 10 May 2009
Le jour se lève
Category: Janus Challenge
4 Comments
Director: Marcel Carné
Country: France
Year: 1939
“Marcel Carné was an unfashionable figure long before his directing career came to an end. Scorned by a new generation of filmmakers, Carné grew more and more out of touch with contemporary developments, despite an eagerness to explore new subjects and use young performers…While future critics are unlikely to find much [...]
Sun 3 May 2009
Director: Sergei Eisenstein
Country: Soviet Union
Year: 1958
BACKGROUND
After 1938’s Alexander Nevsky, Eisenstein turned his attention to another mythic figure from Russian history: the Muscovite warrior-king Ivan IV, aka “Ivan the Terrible.” Fun fact from the Criterion website: Ivan was a contemporary of Henry VIII. Yes, that puts things in perspective, doesn’t it?
As with Nevsky, the idea was [...]
