Photos: Classiq Journal
I used to say that classic films should be made more available to audiences. Now I am inclined to take my words back. So many films are now available and so many people are so lost in streaming services that they get confused by choice. How can you choose? Just by watching one after another and hit stop if it bores you? Is that the way to build up film knowledge? I think not. Does it even matter? I don’t know. But it does for me. I still believe in culture. Maybe film history should be taught in schools. And the fact that film projects for children like CineKids exist gives me a little hope. Actually, it gives me sheer joy. It’s up to the ones who love cinema to keep passing on to future generations what the thrill and the love of a great film can be. We simply have to watch films together, to introduce children to films, bit by bit, exposing them to diverse films and to the world cinema. And once we do that, we may have faith that once they start taking the risk of going further and start choosing for themselves, they will remain curious.
But how about the younger generations who are no longer children though? I admit I am at a loss there. How to explain to them a movie like Fellini’s 8 1/2? What are they able to take from it? Regular moviegoers today are easily bored. They need entertainment. They don’t want to be challenged. They don’t want to be different. And that’s where their illiteracy really takes new heights. They want a film to be easy to understand, they are not interested in learning how to read a film, let alone read it in a wider context. And where can they learn from when the cinema has been taken over by blockbusters and the biggest streaming platform is Netflix, who, let’s be honest, works mainly of the principles of the more the merrier not the better?
Why isn’t The Criterion Channel available worldwide? Why will Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation be reserved to a few privileged countries when it’s opening up a virtual movie theater beginning with this month? These organisations are created by people who know and love film, whose selection of movies makes sense and can be trusted. Why aren’t they offering wider access to culture and to the history of film? Mubi, on the other hand, does that, with a subscription, of course, and it does a marvelous job at it. But there should be more. And, most importantly, there should be more independent cinemas where good recent films should be shown and where retrospectives of older films should also take place. I still believe that cinemas are the best places to watch movies. People should be movie goers. That’s where the experience is the most impactful. And the ones who will take the effort to learn and understand a film will be more than just a few. I hope the word of mouth can once again ring out to fill the box office with the sound of impressions about the latest good film, or with the buzz of a classic gem that some of us dream of having watched on the big screen when it first came out, before or when we were only children, waiting for our curiosity to grow, not to fade as we continued to grow up and to discover movies.
Viewing
Just 6.5, 2019
Saeed Roustayi
A harsh, sobering depiction of the terrifying drug war in Iran and of the inability of a law system to deal with it. The reaches of its machination are so broad that it’s impossible not to resonate with you on some personal level, even remotely. It’s alert and bitter (the extraordinary performance of Payman Maadi – he made another great role in Asghar Farhadi’s A Separarion – contributes a great deal to that) and to say it’s full of action would be a misinterpretation, because the right word to use here is that it’s alive. That’s how it feels, in all its complexity and hopelessness and hellish reality.
Shakedown, 1950
Joseph Pevney
The main character in this genuine noir, Jack Early (Howard Duff), is a guy who will literally do anything to get what he wants. He is a young newspaper photographer, unscrupulous, who won’t stop at anything that will get him a selling photograph or that will get him all the way up the success ladder. He is a little cold around his heart. This is one of those neglected B noir films, with no big stars in them, with no constraint to fit into a genre, with no money to dictate a happy ending. From a time when they were just making movies.
Mona Lisa, 1986
Neil Jordan
A hard-edged neo-noir, one of the best of its kind. Bob Hoskins makes a great role, one of those you wish to see more often, complex and subtle at the same time. He is a chauffeur hired by the man he did seven years of prison for (Michael Caine) to drive around a high-class prostitute (Cathy Tyson). He is further thrown into a life of crime, a gritty, horrible London underworld that he has a hard time accepting it even exists, on the recurring title song of Nat King Cole, but he is by no means a one-sided character, no great character ever is. He could be any guy who has hit rough times, made a few mistakes, but still trying to do something good when he sees all the bad around him.
Reading
Walden, the Penguin Classics edition – they are timeless. Because Henry David Thoreau’s classic is the original book about abandoning our “lives of quiet desperation” and getting back to nature.
Archive interviews from the pages of Sight and Sound. Why the archive interviews? Because I really don’t care if a great film from the 1970s or 1940s doesn’t fit into the present day schools of thought. Reinterpreting a film for modern audiences is simply a nonsense, it misses what cinema is all about.
Listening
The Sarah Schill podcast. The episode with Elettra Wiedemann is the first one Sarah has done in English so far and one of my favourites. How did the model become a farmer? I find great inspiration in Elettra’s life journey, in her down-to-earthiness, authenticity, positive energy and her constant drive to remain curious and to evolve, as a person, as a mother, as part of a community and of this world we call our home. Sarah Schill asks the right questions and their conversation flows effortlessly through different aspects of life, motherhood, professional choices, family roots and fame.
Mott The Hoople, All the Young Dudes. Billy Idol is talking about them in his autobiography and I have been catching up.
Flogging Molly, Swagger. That sound!
The Editors. Every single album! Because three years after I first saw them in concert, they are touring again this summer and I hope I will see them on stage again. Here are the tour dates.
Making
Slow fashion is unfortunately a term that is starting to be used too generously. Few brands that claim to be part of this way of making fashion stand out for me. She’s Linen is at the forefront. They make clothes, exclusively of linen, beautiful clothes meant to ease into the wearer’s way of life. But She’s Linen is about more than clothes. It’s about life choices, simplicity, moderation, connection to nature, mindfulness. The future, not just the future of fashion, looks inspiring when I think of She’s Linen.
Exploring
The red clay court of Rome. I love the understated quality of the Rome tennis tournament (to be held between 8 and 17 May) and its superb location might even surpass Roland Garros.
The regulars: The interviews, newsletters and podcasts I turn to every week and/or every month because they are that good. Craig Mod’s all three newsletters: Roden, Ridgeline, and Huh. Wes Del Val’s book-ish interviews. Soundtracking, with Edith Bowman. Team Deakins, with Roger and James Deakins. Alicia Kennedy’s newsletter. The Racquet magazine newsletter. The Adventure Podcast: Terra Incognita. The print magazines Monocle and Sirene.
