First Impressions: Thinking Aloud About Film

https://notesonfilm1.com/2023/10/08/el-esqueleto-de-la-senora-morales-the-skeleton-of-mrs-morales-rogelio-a-gonzalez-mexico-1960/ A taxidermist is married to a wife who constantly nags, feigns illness and tells neighbours he’s is abusing her whenever he doesn’t do what she wants. What do you think will happen? EL ESQUELETO DE LA SEÑORA MORALES/ THE SKELETON OF MRS MORALES (Rogelio A. Gonzalez. Mex...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2023/09/18/thinking-aloud-about-film-stronger-than-love-mas-fuerte-que-el-amor-cuba-mexico-tulio-demicheli-1955/ Stronger Than Love/ Más fuerte que el amor (Cuba/ Mexico, Tulio Demicheli, 1955) Another fascinating film showing on MUBI; part of the ‘Spectacle Every Day: The Many Seasons of Mexican Cinema’ program; a lurid and very entertaining melodrama; interesting to comp...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2023/09/14/thinking-aloud-about-film-her-man-tay-garnett-1930/ A ‘pre-Code’ film set in Havana, probably so lots of drinking could take place during Prohibition, and based on the Frankie and Johnny song about a prostitute who falls in love with a sailor and kills her pimp(see below). The roving camera in HER MAN challenges many of the pre-conceptions of cinema at the begin...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2023/09/11/streetwalker-trotacalles-matilde-landeta-mexico-1951/ A female perspective on sex and marriage evoking a great mistrust of the social construction of romantic love. Truly radical for its time, in the way that it so clearly positions marriage as equivalent to prostitution, and makes husbands equivalents to pimps. The third film directed my Matilde Landeta, who ha...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2023/08/25/thinking-aloud-about-film-the-eloquent-peasant-shadi-abdel-salam-egypt-1970/ We podcast on our second Shadi Abdel Salam film, the beautiful Film Foundation restoration of The Eloquent Peasant. The film is a parable, a moral lesson. A peasant is robbed of his cargo by a rich man. Is justice for the powerless possible or are the rich protected by too many vested i...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2023/08/15/thinking-aloud-about-film-deep-crimson-profundo-carmesi-arturo-ripstein-mexico-1996/ This is our eighth podcast on Arturo Ripstein films. Increased exposure has only increased our appreciation; and Deep Crimson seems the best of the films we've seen. Based on a true story that was then made into a film by Leonard Kastle in 1970 -- The Honeymoon Killers -- Deep C...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2023/07/26/thinking-aloud-about-film-bushman-david-schickele-1971/ BUSHMAN (David Schickele, 1971) is a real discovery, already the subject of much excitement when shown at Ritrovato in Bologna, and now made available to us through Cinema Re-Discovered this coming weekend, where it is being screened Sunday 30th of July at 18.30. Set in 1968, in the context of the murders o...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2023/07/22/thinking-aloud-about-film-cinema-rediscovered-2023/ Cinema Rediscovered, which takes place annually in Bristol, is one of the most exciting events in the cinema calendar year. In the accompanying podcast, Richard discusses the various strands of the program (Reframing Film; Restored and Re-discovered; Look Who's Back -- The Hollywood Renaissance and the Blacklis...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2023/07/14/thinking-aloud-about-film-the-killers-1946-1964/ In the podcast we compare the two films, a noir and a neo-noir, the 46 version made stars of Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner. We then compare both to the Tarkovski 1956 student version of the film, what they use of Hemingway, and what needed to be invented as background.  We discuss why the 1946 continues to fascin...

I was unable to attend this year's Ritrovato; a pity as the programming is often a preview of films that subsequently screen elsewhere and inevitably become highlights of the year. Luckily, Richard was there to report on what he saw he saw.  In the podcast, we discuss the following sections of the festival:The Time Machine: 1923, where films from a century ago get highlighted; The Space Machine se...

Comrades (Bill Douglas, UK, 1986) In the accompanying podcase, we discuss Bill Douglas’ fourth and final film, very different from his earlier trilogy: A three-hour-long epic of the ‘Tolpuddle Martyrs’, a group of early 19th-century agricultural workers who band together to unite against the lowering of their wages, form The Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers, an early form of trade union,...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2023/05/11/thinking-aloud-about-film-stella-dallas-henry-king-usa-1925/ We discuss the latest in the series of magnificent Film Foundation Screenings, the 1925 version of STELLA DALLAS directed by Henry King and restored by MOMA. It’s a glorious experience to see a film now almost 100 years old, looking brand new, probably seeing it in a better condition than most audience...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2023/05/06/thinking-aloud-about-film-water-drops-on-burning-rocks-francois-ozon-france-2000/ Today’s Fassbinder is a podcast on François Ozon’s adaptation of Fassbinder’s play, WATER DROPS LIKE BURNING ROCKS (France, 2000). This is the second of Ozon’s adaptations of a Fassbinder work, the other being the dreadful PETER VON KANT. We discuss the play, which remained unprodu...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2023/04/29/thinking-aloud-about-film-the-bill-douglas-trilogy/ We discuss The Bill Douglas Trilogy. The first with it's echoes of Maxim Gorky must be one of the greatest films in the history of cinema, and a discovery. My Ain Folk, also medium length, we also claim is a great film. We hae greater doubts about the third film, My Own Way Home, the only one that really qualif...

A film that frightened me when I first saw it as a teenager. Richard’s only now seen it. Does it hold up? Made at a time when there was a real dearth of representation, this is as queer as a film can be, on many levels. The problem is not homosexuality but bourgeois exploitation, including by gay men. Why hasn’t Fassbinder been canonised by all the young queer boys? We speculate on that and much m...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2023/04/15/prisioneros-de-la-tierra-prisoners-of-the-earth-mario-soffici-argentina-1939/ Seen as part of The Film Foundation’s ‘Restoration Screening Room’: Prisioneros de la tierra/Prisoners of the Earth (Mario Soffici, Argentina, 1939) is a melodrama that vividly evokes emotions but channels them so the film also acts as a social critique of colonialism, exploitative emp...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2023/04/09/thinking-aloud-about-film-beware-of-the-holy-whore-rainer-werner-fassbinder-west-germany-1971/ I’ve been watching all the Fassbinder films I can get my hands on in chronological order and find this the culmination of his early works, a great film about filmmaking to rank alongside Minnelli’s TWO WEEKS IN ANOTHER TOWN (1962) Godard’s CONTEMPT (1963) or Truffaut’s...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2023/04/03/thinking-aloud-about-film-de-cierta-manera-one-way-or-another-sara-gomez-cuba-1974/ Thinking Aloud About Film talks Sara Gomez’ debut feature, DE CIERTA MANERA/ ONE WAY OR ANOTHER, a model of Marxist dialectical filmmaking, mixing fiction and documentary; a dramatic auto-critique of class and race that puts gender at the centre: an extraordinary film, currently...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2023/03/29/thinking-aloud-about-film-hippodrome-silent-film-festival-2023-boness/ Intrepid investigative journalist Richard Layne returns to the Hippodrome Silent Film Festival to report on the films and the glamour of Silent Cinema in Bo’Ness, a model of what place and event can do together: a site of scholarship, restoration, fandom and even the commission of aspects of...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2023/03/22/thinking-aloud-about-film-el-imperio-de-la-fortuna-the-realm-of-fortune-arturo-ripstein-mexico-1986/ Dionisio (Ernesto Gómez Cruz) lives with his mother in a one-room hut, scraping a living as a town-cryer. He’s at cock-fight in a village fair and is given a bloodied rooster as a tip. Dionisio heals him and begins a career. The innocent naïve peasant is transfor...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2023/03/15/thinking-aloud-about-film-cadena-perpetua-life-sentence-arturo-ripstein-mexico-1979/ A great noir, currently on MUBI, that brings to mind Crime & Punishment, Jean Valjean, Bresson's Pickpocket and I Was a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, among others. A petty thief and former pimp, now a banker, s forced back into a life of crime by the very police who are meant to u...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2023/03/07/el-santo-oficio-the-holy-office-the-holy-inquisitionarturo-ripstein-mexico-1974/ EL SANTO OFICIO/ THE HOLY OFFICE / THE HOLY INQUISITION (Arturo Ripstein, Mexico, 1974) is a more serious and austere film than we’re used to seeing from Arturo Ripstein, but at least as great as anything we’ve seen by him so far. A Jewish family fleeing persecution in Spain make a...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2023/02/26/the-place-without-limits-el-lugar-sin-limites-arturo-ripstein-mexico-1978/ A film that shocked and delighted with the unexpected. A film that makes one re-think a history of queer representation and 70s cinema. A transnational project in the sense that it's based on a Chilean novel by José Donoso, with a script in which Manuel Puig (Argentina) collaborated and o...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2023/02/21/thinking-aloud-about-cinema-la-viuda-negra-the-black-widow-arturo-ripstein-mexico-1977/ We continue our exploration of the Arturo Ripstein films currently available on MUBI with a discussion of The Black Widow/ La viuda negra. The film is based on Debiera haber obispas/ There Should Be Female Bishops, a novel by Rafael Solanas. It’s a film we urge all of our fri...

https://notesonfilm1.com/2023/02/11/thinking-aloud-about-film-el-castillo-de-la-pureza-castle-of-purity-arturo-ripstein-mexico-1972/ I’ve been wanting to see Arturo Ripstein films for decades and never had the opportunity. Now MUBI is showing five of his films and, on the basis of El Castillo de la pureza/ The Castle of Purity, I plan to see them all. The film is based on a real story – not unlike...