Lost in Criterion

Gertrud abandons Dreyer's previous religious themes for a different sort of spiritual question.

There's one joke in Ordet, and Pat and Adam disagree on how good it is.

We're digging into a Carl Th Dreyer boxset this week and starting things off with Day of Wrath from 1943. Dreyer made one feature film per decade after The Passion of Joan of Arc -- well, two in the 40's if you count Two People, which Dreyer didn't so maybe we won't either -- and every one of them is a masterpiece that's going to sit with me for a long time.

Filmmaker Wrion Bowling joins us today for this documentary about two out of touch and out of mind ex-socialites, which leads to a discussion on whether the Maysles Brothers are exploiting the Beales, whether or not the Maysles Brothers think they're exploiting the Beales, and various multiverse versions of the film that obviously exist because quantum theory.

Out to make a "nonfiction feature film" Albert and David Maysles went back to their roots in Boston and their former jobs as door-to-door salesmen. Salesman (1968) follows a group of men trying to sell illuminated Bibles to middle class Catholics with varying degrees of success. It's compelling on multiple levels -- from being a simple character study to an expose on the commercialization of American religion -- and hopefully we hit a few of them.

Billy Liar is a lot like Rushmore, if Rushmore ended with no one learning anything.

Another Bruce Robinson film this week, and another Richard E. Grant starring role. 1989's How to Get Ahead in Advertising is a biting satire of consumerist culture as Grant's advertising exec has a bad case of a sentient boil. Or just a weird psychotic breakdown.

Written and directed by Bruce Robinson, Withnail and I (1987) is a semi-autobiographical tale of alcohol-soaked desperation at the dying end of the 1960's. It's immensely quotable. Do yourself a favor and watch it.

With Sullivan's Travels (1942) Preston Sturges makes a very preachy movie against making preachy movies. This could be a deep irony. Or he could be dumb. We report, you decide.

Luis Bunuel's 1964 Diary of a Chambermaid, his first collaboration with Jean-Claude Carriere (the two would later work together on The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie), is actually the second adaptation of Octave Mirbeau's novel. The other was made by Jean Renoir in Hollywood in 1946, and while I've not seen it I'm betting it's quite a different film.