“Cerrar los ojos – Close the Eyes”: what a weird, counter-intuitive, absurd way to title a film it is. It is on the contrary with eyes wide open that the audience go to the theater, expecting a spectacle and a narrative that would move them, especially coming from so praised but so rare a filmmaker – Victor Erice…
Author: Philippe Vigneres
The Long Day Closes
“You are not introducing a film!”, the cross female voice from another world, actually from another movie, the 1950 British comedy “The Happiest Days of Your Life”, tells – but then the 20th Century Fox parade is played, rather clumsily, giving way to Nat King Cole’s unforgettable voice crooning romantic and…
Millennium Actress
What lies behind a successful career in filmmaking? Luck, of course, with a producer noticing your face by chance, getting impressed, and then stubbornly talking you into seizing the opportunity he has in mind. Then there is hard work and willingness to play as many parts as possible, exploring many…
Perfect Blue
A high-angle shot follows a trio of youngsters waiting for a concert by CHAM, their favorite Japanese pop group, to begin. After watching a performance by actors playing the heroes of a television series, they talk about the news that this could be the last gig of the all-female band, since the lead…
Le roi et l’oiseau
Once upon a time in the city of Takicardie there was a king liking to hunt birds but unable to shoot down a big and talkative one which is always poking fun at him –being cross-eyed and a bully do not help. The film quickly makes plain that the king’s rule is tyrannical, with a paramount cult of personality…
Heaven’s Gate
Heaven’s Gate is the grandiloquent name of the vast ballroom adjoining the saloon of a muddy little town located in Johnson County, Wyoming. This is where people have fun on Sundays, especially by dancing with roller skates on and also where they gather when they have to argue about big issues. The…
The Deer Hunter
Men have their rituals. The moments and places of these rituals naturally carry them away from the constraints of work and family and drive them right at the heart of their passions; above all, they bring them together. It could be going to a friend’s bar, or hunting, or marrying. These friendly and manly…
Excalibur
A woman on her knees caringly, and perhaps with too much love, hugs her little boy of a son, who is still disturbingly haughty and mature for his age, shot in a slightly high angle. Then the camera lowers a little, pans a little to the left, and as the woman bends away, releasing her son, he is now…
Gaav – The Cow
Watching the watchers: the film begins with a long string of shots, often medium ones or closeups, on rapt faces, riveted by what they observe, which lies beyond the frame, out of the audience’s sight. The film eventually discloses what is transfixing the inhabitants of the small Iranian village where…
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid
The last western shot by director Sam Peckinpah begins with a stunning and shocking cross-cut editing, blending a brownish cinematography capturing an old man and his companions discussing business matters before getting under fire from gunmen set to kill him, and succeeding in the grisly job shot…
The Wild Bunch
This Wild Bunch (a phrase coined by newsmen to name famous groups of outlaws that shocked and awed folks across the American West) is a large and organized group of dangerous horsemen robbing banks and whatever stuff that can be sold for gold in Texas circa 1913. They are chased by a railroad…
Ben trong vo ken vang – Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell
The film has no title sequence and brings the audience in the heat of the action, a soccer match by night. It is shot in a wide shot from behind the goalposts and while a couple of players standing behind the net are chatting attention is inevitably caught by the tall, funny rabbit standing on the left, the…
La salamandre
The film begins and ends with the same, quirky cinematography: very grainy images, very slow motion, and extreme closeups, a sense of confusion even as the scene is centered on an element shot in a striking and obsessive manner, a gun at the start, the face of a young woman wandering…
All That Jazz
In the first scene a man walks on a tightrope in a vast, featureless, and dark space. Unfortunately he loses his balance and falls – but he lands in a big safety net, no, he does not crash on the ground, well not yet. He sticks around this uncanny world, whose settings get more furnished but also…
I… comme Icare
Before enjoying the moving images, the audience first discover a film with a still image, the poster displayed in the movie theaters, the streets, and the media. The poster of this political thriller puts close to the center of the image in big red thin letters the names of Montand and Verneuil next to each…