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TROUBLE
IN PARADISE (dir: Ernst Lubitsch, Not Rated) - Bart says,
"Ernst Lubitsch is one of those directors' directors whose most
popular movies (NINOTCHKA, THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER, TO BE OR NOT
TO BE) are admittedly really, really good, but you wonder why he's
so universally beloved in the film community. It's not until you see
some of his pre-code movies (you know, before religious groups
forced Hollywood to remove all immorality from films for 30-some
years) that you understand what that so-called "Lubitsch
Touch" is all about. TROUBLE IN PARADISE, about a love triangle
between a pair of thieving lovers and the wealthy woman they are
trying to swindle, is undoubtedly my favorite film of his, and it's
mostly the shocking innuendo that makes it so good. I'm willing to
bet we'd all be much bigger Lubitsch fans now if he were allowed to
keep making movies as wittily sordid as this one." |
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WAS BORN, BUT... (dir: Yasujiro
Ozu, Not Rated) - Bart says, "By 1930, most of the world
had converted to making films with sound. Not true in Japan where
even a popular director like Yasujiro
Ozu didn't get to make his first sound film until 1935. My viewing
of this, his most well-regarded silent film, was a transcendent
experience, sitting in an auditorium with dozens of other students
in complete silence (musical accompanyment was not traditional for
Japanese silents) watching the two young brothers in the movie
discover with increasing disappointment that their father is merely human. Only Chaplin's CITY LIGHTS comes
close to being so funny and so moving at the same time." |
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