Cinema Magic

For the most part, I prefer comedies. 

There are like fourty-fifty Soviet comedies or so that are not translated in English yet, while they certainly deserve it. Today I've watched for the first time Soviet tragicomedy Love And Pigeons. It was the version with English subtitles. The translation does not reflect specific village dialect of Russian, but is correct in general: 

 

The Soviet art of any era of the USSR's existence always wonderfully kept and caught that ambiguos state of things that all the Soviet people used to. On the one hand, the Soviet movies up until Perestroika were very polished with the localities perfectly clean, people perfectly hairdressed, everything is neat and fit, nobody swears, et al. On the other one, the Soviet movies of any era were surprisingly realistic if you were able to read between the frames... Yes, it sounds like a contradiction - but it was/is why many former Soviet citizens of any age still remember the USSR with sweet touching nostalgia (that certainly shocks many foreigners). There's nothing truly shocking in it, because the USSR was a bit like Willow Farm, you know, where there were mum and dad and good and bad and Winston Churchill and Yuri Gagarin and Stalin and WW2 veterans and everything possible and impossible in one can, or in one stack if you will. 

The other Soviet comedy Grandads-Robbers directed by the main Soviet movie satiricist Eldar Ryazanov in the early 1970s is among my favourites and I think it is one of the warmest Soviet movies ever. Along with Chaplin's The Kid that glorified mothers and children, Grandads-Robbers glorified old men and women who want to be young and be of any use to the society they live in. 

There was a mysteriously-little-known even among the Soviet audiences comedy Zaychik (Little Hare, which is the last name of the protagonist). Brilliant movie about terribly shy indecisive guy working in the provincial theatre. 

There was a nice movie If I Were A Boss aiming to say that it's not that easy and fun to be the head of the factory. 

In the mid-nineties the TV series of three movies (each shown on the New Year's Eve) were made. They were called Old Songs About The Main Things In Life, where modern singers re-sung classic Soviet movies. By the way, two men that stood behind that string of movies were totally anti-Soviet... So, it was not the Soviet propaganda media product. No, it simply tried to recreate the good old days' atmosphere. They succeeded, I must say. Here's an extract from the first movie: 

 

That's a nice list, moshkito. Shows well the importance of the work of the cinematographer. Most of the cinematographers I can think of out of my head are mentioned but I would add these names:

- Gordon Willis (The Godfather trilogy, some of the better work of Woody Allen...)

- Robby Müller (especially known for his work with Wim Wenders and Jim Jarmusch and one or two Lars von Trier films...)

- Fred Kelemen (much lesser known, but I like his work on some of the later Bela Tarr films and on his own films...)

...and there must be some Italians, but I don't remember their names, apart from Carlo di Palma (I'm especially thinking of the work on Antonioni's films...)...

Hi,

Thx

John Alcott: 2001, A Clockwork Orange, Overlord, Barry Lyndon, The Shining, Triumphs of a Man Called Horse, 

Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan Lord of the Apes

I forgot him and wanted to mention Stanley Kubrick, but forgot about it ... in general, when you see this stuff, and compare it to a couple of other films SK did, I think that John Alcott "made" SK shine ... this "style" is not quite as visible and wide open on the screen, in any of SK's early films, or a couple of the later films. It might have made EWS a lot better film, I wonder. It kinda needed a Nicolas Roeg to make the whole thing sexier instead of ... I don't know ... that film confuses me silly!

The film with Richard Harris (Horse) is very memorable visually. Greystoke also has some very visual moments.

Saying that, btw, is not to take anything away from SK. He still stands tall ... although he is not exactly one of my favorite directors, but his explosion of music in film, helped usher Nicolas Roeg and PERFORMANCE and eventually MTV. Music was not quite as much of a "thing" in film before, although one could easily mention many others that made it memorable with the music, although it was not always used very well in the film, and left to opening or closing credits ... I like it all over! 

Conrad Hall: The Professionals, In Cold Blood, Cool Hand Luke, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Electra Glide in Blue, Marathon Man, Black Widow, Searching for Bobby Fisher, American Beauty