First Impressions: Thinking Aloud About Film

A conversation with Ilaria Puliti on Luca, focussing on how it lends itself to readings of queerness and of migration, and also relating the film's world to postwar Italian culture and society.

https://notesonfilm1.com/2021/08/09/hou-hsiao-hsien-23-contexts-13-in-our-time-yi-chang-ko-i-chen-tao-te-chen-edward-yang-1982/

A central film in the history of New Taiwanese Cinema. A portmanteu film, like The Sandwich Man,  composed of films by four different directors :Dinosaur/ Little Dragon Head, d: Tao Te Chen; Expectations/ Desires, d: Edward Yang; Leapfrog, d: Ko I-chen; Say Your Name/ Show Your ID, d: Yi Chang. The films are structured in chronological order, each film set in a different decade from the 50s to the 80s. 

In the podcast we discuss the figure of the Child in Taiwanese cinema, which seems to be a recurring pattern.

We're thrilled by the extraordinary depiction of the female gaze in Edward Yang's episode and the beautiful and complex way it's visually conveyed. What Yang can do with a pan is quite extraordinary.

We talk about how this new wave comes across as a 'boy's club' and discuss the context of the last episode in relation to Sylvia Chang. We also wonder whether Sylvia Chang might be overlooked more by Western critics than Taiwanese ones and the effect that that might have on our perception and accounts of this cinema in the West and whether this is an effect of overvaluing auteurism at the expense of social and industrial contexts. 

We note the use of music and discuss how those choices might have affected the international circulation of this film. We talk about the many common elements these short films have with Hou Hsiao-hsien's early commercial work. It's a film we both highly recommend,

https://notesonfilm1.com/2021/08/02/ritrovato-2021-with-richard-layne-jose-arroyo-digital-offerings/

We thank the Cineteca di Bologna for the 2021 digital offerings and return for the third year in a row to discuss their programme. This year we reflect on the digital absence of major strands such as the Romy Schneider or George Stevens films which were only shown in situ. We discuss difficulties with translation and sub-titling, note how the digital offerings were quite US and Eurocentric, atypical for this festival, and discuss some of the highlights of Richard's viewing, silent cinema, Wolfgang Staudte films, the only film on the Algerian War made as it was happening (Les oliviers de la justice, 1961), André Dalvaux' MAN WHO HAD HIS HAIR CUT SHORT (1965), Lionel Rogosin's ARAB ISRAELI DIALOGUE (1974), Govindan Aravindan KUMMATTY (1979) and classics such as I WAKE UP SCREAMING(H Bruce Humberstone, 1941), ESA PAREJA FELIZ (Berlanga/Bardem 1959) and NIGHTMARE ALLEY (Edmund Goulding, 1947).

A discussion of OUR TIME, OUR STORY, a more traditional documentary than FLOWERS OF TAIPEI but all the better for it. A film with various kinds of contexts (production, distribution, exhibition, reception) that historicises well, finds extraordinary archival footage, interviews many of the leading people involved in Taiwan's New Cinema and really enhances our knowledge of the period, the movement, and the films themselves. The clips in the film really make us appreciate how new restorations have enhanced the visual beauty of these films.

https://notesonfilm1.com/2021/07/23/hou-hsiao-hsien-21-a-city-of-sadness-1989/

After all our contextualising, we return to Hou Hsiao-hsien films proper, focussing on the masterpiece that is a City of Sadness. We are able now to discuss not only what the film feels like to watch or what it is about in formal terms but can now add various kinds of contexts: historical, political, social, aesthetic, industrial, and even how our own personal histories find echo in the film and how those echoes add a layer of insight and understanding into the film and perhaps also into ourselves. It makes for a rich but still -- as is proper with all great works -- initial and tentative discussion.

https://notesonfilm1.com/2021/07/15/18745/

We continue with our discussion of Edward Yang films in relation to Hou Hsiao-hsien's work. We discuss the film in relation to Postmodernism, Existentialism, contingency, nausea, chance. We note that Fredric Jameson wrote on Sartre, Postmodernism, and this film. We discuss, Yang's characteristic visuals, his distinctive way of filming, narrating, and style of characterisation. We continue to be entranced.

https://notesonfilm1.com/2021/06/25/hou-hsiao-hsien-19-context-10-edward-young-1985/

Richard and I discuss our admiration of Edward Yang's Taipei Story. It's connection to Hou Hsiao-hsien, who stars and co-wrote the screenplay. It's a mosaic of a film in which a relationship between two people who care for each other falls apart and as it does so we get to see stories of a people and of a city in transition in a country situated within two imperial cultures, Japanese and American, with mainland China always hovering on the background. It's a beautiful film, with really striking, original and beautiful imagery: Yang's flat face-on camera, uses of screens, reflections, the city always ever present in what is ultimately a chamber piece focussing on a couple and their immediate relations, the couple caught between a longed for past (on his part) and an uncertain future in hers. A truly great film.

https://notesonfilm1.com/2021/06/21/hou-hsiao-hsien-18-context-9-flowers-of-taipei-taiwan-new-cinema-chinlin-hsieh-2014/

A discussion of FLOWERS OF TAIPEI, a documentary on Taiwan New Cinema. José saw it twice; the first time finding it interesting but almost instantly forgettable; the second time it incensed him, seeming an attempt to get a production to pay for a director's networking opportunities rather than a work that actually illuminates what Taiwan New Cinema might be; its history, contexts, development. We do get to see it's impact on major names from East Asia. Richard is as always the voice of reason.

https://notesonfilm1.com/2021/06/16/hou-hsiao-hsien-17-contexts-8-the-rice-dumpling-vendors-hsin-chi-1969/

A discussion of Hsin Chi's THE RICE DUMPLING VENDORS, a rare male melodrama. The protagonist kicks his wife out of the house for perceived infidelity; as soon as he does the whole family falls apart and is plunged in a spiral of poverty, the father at one point abandoning his baby even as his two minor children take on jobs in order to buy milk. The film documents a society on the cusp of modernity and suffering the effects of the social and economic effects produced by it. Stylistically, the film is highly skilled and gorgeous to look at. Character's thoughts are offered in voice-over or through song. There is a mix of genres: noir/action/family-melodrama/documentary. It's a cinephile's film, with references to PSYCHO and other films. The music borrows from CINDERELLA as well as then current pop-hits as Sinatra's version of 'I've Got You Under My Skin'. We also discuss the extent to which this film is an influence on Hou Hsiao-hsien's THE SANDWICH MAN. The more Hsin Chi films we see, the more we like and value them.

https://notesonfilm1.com/2021/06/13/hou-hsiao-hsien-16-contexts-7-dangerous-youth-hsin-chi-1969/

Continuing with our discussion of Hsin Chi films. This time the focus is on DANGEROUS YOUTH. We offer a bit of background on Hsin Chi; discuss how the film is similar to Nagisa Oshima's CRUEL STORY OF YOUTH, Godard's BREATHLESS, BEAT GIRL, and all the motorcycle gang Roger Corman films of the mid-sixties. The film has the thematics and energy of pre-code sex melodramas but surrounded by a rock-pop soundtrack stylised and transformed by foregrounding the sax. DANGEROUS YOUTH is visually inventive, with fascinating compositions, interesting intimations of nudity through shadows, compositions that make the most of the architecture to suggest interior states and external perspectives. The story of a young girl groomed into prostitution for money by the pimp she loves and the richer woman who is pulling his strings, is given sexy, noirish form and fascinating gender politics. Does anyone believe the end?