Lost in Criterion

Two movies for the price of one with this week's outing. In 1902 Maxim Gorky debuted his play The Lower Depths about a group of people living in a flophouse in Russia. It was an international hit of a character study, leading to localizations around the world. In 1957 Akira Kurosawa made a version that was fairly faithful to the source material except transported to 19th century Japan. In 1936 Jean Renoir made it into a romantic comedy.

Godard's ode to Lubitsch isn'y quite as eye-rolly as the title suggests.

Many of Ingmar Bergman's films could be called comedies in the existential cosmic absurdism sense, but Smiles of a Summer Night (1955) is a romantic comedy sex romp with shades of Oscar Wilde. It was Bergman's big break. He'd been making films for over a decade with nothing landing with an audience. He was at his wits end, even thought he was dying, and desperately needed a win. Which he definitely got here.

It was only a matter of time before we had to watch another Pier Paolo Pasolini film. And after that first one, so many years ago, we were not looking forward to it. But no movie could be another Salo, though I'm sure some have tried.

Mamma Roma is, in a way, a proto-Salo, though. It is a critique of Italian identity and power structures that while comparatively mild I can imagine that between its release in 1962 and Salo's in 1975 Pasolini boiled over from wanting to be heard properly. "We are bad people. We do bad things to ourselves." is the refrain (echoed by Visconti in last week's The Leopard as well), the message here is a slow simmer compared to what it would become, but no less unsubtle.

"We were the leopards, the lions, those who take our place will be jackals, hyenas and the whole lot of us - leopards, lions, jackals and sheep - will continue to think ourselves the salt of the earth."