Criterion Film Club: Suggestions and General Discussion

[Michael Kerpan]

No Blood Relation is a clunky translation of Naruse's title -- a more suitable name (if not totally literal) would be "the Stepmother" -- or "the Stepdaughter"). I would say this is not a "masterpiece" -- like Apart From You and Every Night Dreams -- but is still a quite interesting film. The two female leads are splendid, the little girl is cute -- and there is lots of visual interest.

Note: Yoshiko Okada, the biological mother in the film, was the ultimate "bad girl" of Japanese cinema. She was one of the earliest star actresses, and then was banned from the screen for several years, and acted mainly in left-wing theater productions during her ban. On her return, she tended to play rather dicey characters (like the prostitute-secretary-sister in Ozu's Tokyo Woman and the homeless single mother in his Tokyo Inn). After Tokyo inn, she fled to the Soviet Union with her (married) left-wing theater director-lover -- at the very moment Stalin was beginning his crackdown on formalist artistic folk. She and her lover were arrested on Sakhalin -- and her lover was soon executed, while she spent a couple of decades in a Siberian prison camp. Unwittingly, these two Japanese "spies",who came to the Soviet to work with the great theater director Meyerhold, were used as part of the excuse for killing Meyerhold as a "traitor".

[Drucker]

I just changed my vote, and now there's currently 7 tallied that could swing the vote to Naruse or Fellini. Bump!

[Mr Sausage]

And it's No Blood Relation!

[Lemmy Caution]

Yikes, my late vote decided the issue, and, er, I'm not sure I have a copy of the Naruse film.
I'll look, and make an effort to get it if possible ....

[domino harvey]

[Michael Kerpan]

Yikes, my late vote decided the issue, and, er, I'm not sure I have a copy of the Naruse film.
I'll look, and make an effort to get it if possible ....

I think it may be available on Hulu+.

[Mr Sausage]

As Member of the Year for 2014, Sloper gets to curate a round of voting. Here are his picks. Vote away!

[Drucker]

Dead heat between I Was Born, But... and Music Room.

Looks like the people choosing Last Command could switch to make it interesting!

[Lemmy Caution]

Maybe more people just need to vote for Last Command.
Right up front in my kevyip heap, so would be perfect timing for me.
It's been right up front for months now ...

[Drucker]

Considering we are currently discussing a Von Sternberg film with only 7 or so posts...I'm happy to talk someone else.

[Sloper]

Funny, I thought Kes would win this one... I voted for The Last Command but am delighted to see that we'll be discussing Ray's film, which I think/hope will probably elicit more discussion than the Sternberg would have done.

[Mr Sausage]

It's The Music Room by quite a large margin.

[domino harvey]

[Mr Sausage]

To tie in with the current genre project, here are five films of faith randomly generated from the collection.

[Mr Sausage]

I can't decide between the Wenders, Scorsese, or the Dreyer. But I'm willing to choose one of the two I didn't mention if someone can make a compelling case for one of them.

Like a common whore, I am for sale.

[domino harvey]

I hate the Ruling Class (I think I voted for it when we had the anniversary voting all those years ago as one of the worst films in the collection), and Major Barbara more or less lost me as it went on, though there's plenty to admire in it. Day of Wrath and Wings of Desire are great films, of course, and the Scorsese is in my unseen pillar, so that one gets my vote since I wanted to watch it for the Faith List Project anyways

[warren oates]

I'm voting for The Last Temptation of Christ too, though I've seen it a number of times before, for many of the same reasons as domino. It strikes me as the right combination of most discussable/least discussed, and that's not even considering all of the controversy surrounding the release.

[movielocke]

Majob Barbara is already on my viewing docket for the next couple weeks so that's my vote.

[zedz]

I'm voting for the Scorsese as well. It's an interesting and underappreciated film, and gave rise to one of the most memorable film screenings I've ever attended. It was on first release, and the fundamentalists were out in force protesting it, including waves of them in the theatre walking up to the screen and loudly denouncing the film (while completely missing the point - e.g. "Jesus never said that!!!" to virtually any line of dialogue. Presumably Jesus spent his entire life mute except for the scraps of direct quotation that found their way into the Gospels), And then being dragged out by security only to be replaced by fresh waves of the Scandalized the next time Dafoe had any dialogue.

[Drucker]

Day Of Wrath may be my favorite Dreyer, but I'll go with Temptation of Christ, as I've never seen it and everyone's making it sound very interesting!

[Michael Kerpan]

Is it my imagination -- or is there often more discussion of what to pick than discussion of what does get picked? ;-{

[movielocke]

It's like the announcement of a criterion typically getting more comment than the film itself.

[Mr Sausage]

Well I'm all in for Last Temptation then, even if I somewhat exhausted all I wanted to say about it in that thread where I trashed The Passion of the Christ and Christianity in general, whatever thread that was.

[Mr Sausage]

Last Temptation of Christ it is.

[domino harvey]