The Super 70 Podcast

“There was before Breathless, and there was after Breathless.” So begins the description of Jean-Luc Godard’s first feature film on the back of the Criterion Collection’s Blu Ray edition. Godard became the prime mover in what has been called by film historians as “The French New Wave” that changed cinema forever. His inspired use of cinematography paired with what some would say is his rather lazy attitude towards constructing narrative film was seen and unbelieved by millions. Join Luke and I as we see things we appreciate but tend to shake our heads as this milestone of international cinema.

Ingmar Bergman was 27 years old with a decade of film and stage credits when he had an international hit with the fun loving and light hearted Swedish Musical Smiles of Summer Night. Riding the wave of that success, he swore on a stack of bibles he would shoot his next film in 35 days that summer on a low budget and on the studio lot. The result was a terrifying gothic contemplation of death and existentialism that despite its art house beginnings, took the world by storm in 1957. Join us as we watch Max von Sydow in his breakout role in The Seventh Seal.

Works Cited

Bergman, Ingmar. Images: My Life in Film. Arcade Publishing, 1995.

Bergman on Bergman

Chamberlain, David B. “Auteurism” and Film History. Literature / Film Quarterly Vol 10, No. 4 (1982) pp. 266-272

Cowie, Peter. Ingmar Bergman, A Critical Biography. New York. Scribner, 1982.

Corliss, Richard and Wolf, William. God, Sex, and Ingmar Bergman. Film Comment. Vol. 19., No. 3., (May-June 1983), pp 13-19. Film Society of Lincoln Center.

Kendrick, James. What is the Criterion? The Criterion Collection as an Archive of Film as Culture. Journal of Film and Video Vol. 53, No. ⅔ (Summer / Fall 2001) pp. 124-139. University of Illinois Press.

Singer, Irving. Ingmar Bergman, Cinematic Philosopher: Reflections on His Creativity. The MIT Press. 2007.

Steen, Brigitta. The Isolated Hero of Ingmar Bergman. Film Comment. Vol. 3 No. 2 (Spring 1965) pp. 68-78. Film Society of Lincoln Center.

Take a year, any year, and match it with any year from the 80’s, and I’m willing to bet the 80’s win. Dave Anderson thought that was a crock of Ed Wood, and took me to task on the year 1984. Is it really better than 1974’s auteur boom and 1994’s Indie Craze? Join Dave and I as we touch on the Golden Age of Hollywood, Powell and Pressburger, and the cut scene from Apocalypse Now! that makes that movie work.

Michael Powell was thirty-four when the Second World War broke out and changed the trajectory of his career. By then he had already collaborated with Emeric Pressburger, a Hungarian Jew who had UFA screenwriting experience before the Nuremberg Laws forced him out of Nazi Germany. When the Ministry of Information was formed to crank out narrative propaganda films for the Allied War effort, Powell and Pressburger undertook a high octane war thriller written right on MoI lines in record time. Shot almost entirely in Canada and starring possibly the two most famous British Movie Stars of the 1940’s, The 49th Parallel showcased the grave difference in Nazi and Canadian values, dileneated problematic racial lines, and didn’t pull any punches in ideology.

Works Cited

Anthony Aldgate and Jeffrey Richards. Britain Can Take it: The British Cinema in the Second World War. Basil Blackwell. Oxford. 1986.

Robert Murphy. Realism and Tinsel: Cinema and Society in Britain 1939-1949. Routledge. London and New York. 1989.

Andrew Moor. Powell and Pressburger: A Cinema of Magic Spaces. I.B. Tauris. London. 2005

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Join Dave Anderson and I as we spend the weekend on Galveston Island pontificating on the two most controversial films of the 1980’s, why films with problematic racism should be protected as time capsules, we celebrate the release of Bruce Lee’s Greatest Hits by the Criterion Collection. Then we wrap up discussions by arguing over how to pronounce the names of Hollywood legends Sydney Poitier and Kirstie Alley.

Paul Emig came back into the Hacienda to talk about our favorite topic. We find the droids we’re looking for in Felicity Jones and Emelia Clarke. We marvel at the behind the scenes drama that infected both movies, thanking both Gareth Edwards and Tony Gilroy. And in the end we will take it all despite its flaws. Join Paul and I as we hammer out our love and questions regarding Rogue One and Solo.

Paul Emig is an acquaintance of mine and I saw a Facebook post he wrote about a year ago on the Star Wars Prequels and I was really impressed by how he broke down those three films and pointed out why they don’t work as a narrative. I ran into Paul the other day and I asked him to come onto the show so we could run through most of our favorite space saga. We ran way over, but managed to cover just about anything you ever wanted to know about the cinematic universe.

Join Dave Anderson and I as we wax intellectual after the M podcast. We take a deep dive into the career of Clint Eastwood, go on the rollercoaster of quality that is the James Bond franchise, and discuss the varying success of the Game of Thrones cable series. Near the end of the episode we are accosted by our friend Kirby Wells who gave us his take on George R. R. Martin, and the three of us compare the talents of Kathryn Bigelow and James Cameron. Join us as we drink up and nerd out.

Fritz Lang was already considered one of the leading filmmakers not just in Germany but in the world when he took a script by his wife Thea von Harbou to Nero Film and made perhaps the greatest crime film of all time. Considered a ‘Zeitfilm’ that dealt with contemporary social issues, “M” told the story of a child murderer on the loose in Berlin and how both sides of the law mobilized to bring the criminal to justice. Displaying an almost dizzying visual style to showcase a police procedural paired with an organized crime syndicate, and starring the instantly famous stage actor Peter Lorre as the killer, “M” was the first film to treat the element of sound in cinema as a narrative device instead of a novelty. Join Dave Anderson and I as we go through “M” scene by scene and discuss Kinder Morder, Lustmord, and Kaftka.

Works Cited:

Anton Kaes. M. The BFI Film Classics Series. The British Film Institute. 2000.

Siegfried Kracauer. From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film. Princeton University Press, 1947

Maria Tatar. Lustmord: Sexual Murder in Weimar Germany. Princeton University Press, 1995.

Sergei Eisenstein was 27 years old when the Central Executive Committee of the Communist Party decided to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the 1905 Revolution with literary, stage, and screen commissions. Assigned to make a film about the mutiny that happened aboard the Czar’s star battleship, Eisenstein used the opportunity to deploy his five theories of editing, or what the French cineastes called ‘montage.’ What resulted was hailed from its' premiere as the most popular film ever made, shown in movie houses all over Europe, and in the private screening rooms of Hollywood. The Battleship Potemkin did more than make Eisenstein a star, it put the Soviet Union on firm footing as a competitor in the world’s most popular art form.

Works Cited:

Eisenstein, Sergei. FILM FORM. Harvest Books, New York, 1977.

Leyda, Jay. KINO: A History of the Russian and Soviet Film. Collier Books, New York, 1973

Bascomb, Neal. Red Mutiny: Eleven Fateful Days on the Battleship Potemkin. Mariner Books, New York, 2008.