DVD special features...

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When I buy a DVD, I mainly want the movie, unless there's an interesting documentary or featurette with it, and at good value. I recently bought the Belle De Jour special edition DVD for a cool £9 at Borders. It comes with a doc. about the movie, and some other features. I despise audio commentary over movies, so I was a little irked when I read there was one by some "Professor" on the disc. If I want intellectual crap I'll read something by Roger Ebert or the like. I hate the idea of watching a great film with someone talking you through it. I tried an audio commentary once, with the film Alien, and I found that it simply killed the movie. My point is simple - special features should be seperate from the movie, they shouldn't kill the experience with a bogus commentary from some pompous film teacher. To think they actually put an audio commentary over Citizen Kane, again by some film "Professor." Can you imagine the image of the burning sled accompanied to the sound of someone talking a load of crap to himself during the movie? I don't know why some filmmakers agree to putting audio commentaries over their movies; it's ridiculous!

I quite like a good documentary to watch the morning after the main feature; I found the doc. for The Shining fascinating and entertaining. Of course, movie documentaries can be tedious and academic, full of interviews with people telling how great it was and whatever, and with no real insight into the making of a movie. That's what I look for in a good movie documentary. Some history about the film and insight into the making of it. I find the filmmaking process fascinating; how the grand illusion is created...

ENTRY NO. 1 - Dimitri Kirsanoff...

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As I begin this entry I will admit that I have only seen two of his films; Menilmontant and Brumes l'automne, both masterpieces in their own right. The latter is a kind of impressionistic poem about emotional decay that uses the Autumn season as a metaphor for this, and Menilmontant; equally impressionistic yet with more gravity; tells the story of two sisters and their struggles through life from their idyllic childhood, to the murder of their parents at the hands of a madman, to their seduction at the hands of a Parisian thug.

Little is known about Kirsanoff the man. He was born in Estonia in 1899 and later moved to Paris where he made many short films, including Menilmontant. For a short while before making films he attended the "Ecole Normale de Musique" in Paris, working as a violinist in a movie house. Then he married actress Nadia Sibirskaia, who starred in both Menilmontant (1927) and Brumes l'automne (1929). Later in his career it seems he was forced into more commercial works. He divorced Nadia Sibirskaia and had a second wife; Monique Kirsanoff. He died in 1957.

The story of Menilmontant is ripe, if melodramatic cinematic material, yet what sets Kirsanoff apart from other directors of the time is his unmistakeable and revolutionary style; using jump-cuts, close-ups, transitions and kinetic camera movement that fully immerses and emotionally involves the viewer in the story, not to mention the beautiful and emotive violin music. That said, from what I've seen of his, very few shots he could sustain for very long, but that might only annoy the tracking shot-junkies among film buffs. One thing about Kirsanoff's style is certain - it was fuelled by a strong and powerful visual imagination. Indeed the images in both films are incredible, from the frantic tugging of the curtains in the opening to the two girls frolicking amongst the trees, to the bare expanse of dead trees in Brumes l'automne.

If one were to watch Brumes l'automne after Menilmontant, with no idea the same man directed it, they would be able to tell it was a Kirsanoff film, yet as distinct as his style was, the two films are very different. Menilmontant is quite melodramatic and frantic, whereas Brumes l'automne is more naturalistic and meditative. Brumes l'automne hasn't much of a story, it's more about mood and tone. Both feature fantastic performances, especially from Nadia Sibirskaia, his muse and wife for a short while. I'm not sure which one I prefer. I've seen Brumes l'automne twice and Menilmontant three times. As much as I love Menilmontant, I'm leaning towards the sorrowful Brumes l'automne. Whichever one I love most, rest assured, both are films to be seen and experienced. They are like distant memories or dreams of the past; at once beautiful and at once sad...

FILM REVIEW - Badlands...

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Terrence Malick's towering achievement, Badlands is a tale of two youngsters, Kit and Holly; both immersed in fantasies based on Hollywood magazines and James Dean movies, who go on a killing spree from South Dakota to Montana. This film is about two underdeveloped youngsters isolated from the rest of the world. There is no psychoanalysis, and no glorification of violence as with Arthur Penn's Bonnie & Clyde. Instead the film is naturalistic, meditative and detached, but never cold. The performances are impeccable, especially from the two leads; Sissy Spacek and Martin Sheen, who lend the characters a kind of perverse innocence and make them interesting. Malick never condemns them either; they are portrayed as human beings. Yet as despicable as Kit Carruthers is, I somehow care for him. He's like a child, unable to comprehend the damage he causes; almost innocent. So it's deeply sad when this odd creation is sentenced to death by the electric chair...as terrible as the pair are, they seem like the only living things in a dead and empty world, giving the film a chaotic and apocalyptic feel...

But what's most impressive about the film is the way Malick imaginitively connects landscape with character. This is evident in one scene in which Holly (Spacek) flatly spouts useless information about movie stars from a celebrity magazine as the flat, desolate "badlands" pass like a convair belt in the background. These people are so detached from reality that when we're with them we feel like we're on another planet; as witness Kit (Sheen) staring into space in a scarecrow like position while a storm occurs in the distance and various creatures observe with curiosity. This sense of isolation, loneliness and the infinite is what makes this film truly haunting. The film ends at an airstrip where Kit and Holly are being flown away. There is a shot of a postman carrying mail to signify that normal life continues even as the insane fantasies of Kit and Holly fly above the clouds and into the sunset...