The 27th General Hall of Fame

Yeah, capitalism is the real antagonist in the film. The mayor and hotel owners prioritized money over public safety, so it's all on them, not the shark.

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Pretty much. Pandemic life really influenced this viewing for how it highlighted the evil of keeping the beaches open. I thought about mentioning COVID and Florida's "response" to it in my writeup, but I figured it would be too depressing and we hear enough about it on the news.

For sure. And not to mention the mayor only caring once his own son was in harm's way.

Man, there was another film I watched or rewatched recently that also had uncomfortable pandemic parallels, but I don't remember what it was now haha.

I nearly had to reconfigure my entire mind to see L'Amour braque in a way where I'd accept it, and be at peace with the fact that some of it will forever be incomprehensible to me. I'm not talking about appreciating it artistically, or understanding it's plot - I'm talking about certain uses of French slang, culture and literary references I know nothing about that swirl around in a jumble of poetry and style. They come whirling out in an explosive rattling of dialogue, and once every so often leave me completely mystified. There are degrees of mystification however, and after a while I came to appreciate the poetic meaning of certain passages, where we feel more than understand. That's to say, I can never really be sure if I am missing something - confusion can be the point, and at times I may be sensing a deeper meaning that isn't there, and many parts aren't meant to be understood in a straightforward manner.

Here is the cinema landscape of Andrzej Żuławski. An unnatural manic energy is unleashed in all the characters of L'Amour braque, and they will not only never stand still - they'll throw their limbs about, jump, shake, twirl, kick, bite, punch, slap, spit, hug and dance. Their explosive never-ending energy is inexhaustible and total. They'll shout their lines, scream their lines and sing their lines. They'll spit their lines while jumping, dance, scream, fall over and jump up again. When I encountered this, before I knew what to expect, I was completely exhausted within 15 minutes - a kind of empathetic reaction for the actors in the film, who I knew could rest in-between takes but nevertheless seemed raw and covered in sweat. I also couldn't understand the meaning. Why the mania? I felt as if I were watching a vision of Paris where every person in it had been rendered completely insane. I've stopped trying to think of a reason - perhaps because in doing so I might be missing the point.

Film historian Kat Ellinger admits that this is "one of the things that puts people off Żuławski films. This deliberate level of artifice - an almost theatrical way of stylizing the film" - an admission she makes as a fan of his films - saying it "catches people off guard", and that's certainly what it did to me. With this energy comes dialogue which is often cryptic, lyrical, nonsensical, humerous and/or powerful, and it's at a fast pace - a little too fast for me the first time I viewed the film, which meant that the plot, as simple as it is, was completely lost on me as well. I did consider that the film simply didn't have a plot, but it does - it's one that's loosely based on Dostoevsky novel The Idiot. On a train to Paris a group of hoodlums are evading the police after staging a bank robbery. The leader of the gang, Micky (Tchéky Karyo), meets a simple immigrant from Hungary, Léon (Francis Huster) and befriends him. Micky is on his way to rescue (or buy) a hooker he's fallen in love with, Mary (Sophie Marceau), who belongs to the fearsome Venin brothers. When Mary meets Léon she falls in love with him, which means that after Micky has dealt with all the Venin brothers a reckoning will be due this love triangle.

Léon is immigrating and some of his family already live in Paris - his mother's sister's daughter (as he puts it) is an actress and movie star. They're involved/appearing in a production of The Seagull on stage, and it seems as if one of the Venin brothers is a patron of the arts involved with it - something which provides another connection between two arcs of the story. This is also the source of another love interest for Léon - which adds another love triangle to proceedings. As Micky continues to assassinate the Venins the story of how Mary came to belong to them is uncovered - and the fate of Mary's mother is unveiled when a secret video is unearthed, which tells us that beyond being freed, vengeance is also on the table as far as she is concerned. The film's final few scenes are completely given over to surreal metaphor, but by this time the crossover feels like a natural component of the film - the dialogue was metaphorical from the very get-go, so for the action to diverge from naturalism almost makes everything more explicable.

In this film Sophie Marceau managed to break out of her recurring role of sweet innocent young French sweetheart into a more sexually charged woman with greater range. In all actuality she ended up in a relationship with Andrzej Żuławski that lasted 16 years, and she was to appear in more of his films. She auditioned for the role of Mary, but completely froze when the audition commenced, and it was this stricken anxiety that convinced Żuławski to give her the part - he offered it to her before she could even break out of her mind-lock. Her part and her performance are the two things to really take away from L'Amour braque - although many performances in the film are slightly clouded by the sheer exuberant energy expelled by every cast member. It's with Sophie that we get the complexity and range of emotions that befit someone who has had a truly traumatic past, and there's something genuine we feel underneath all of the movement. A quiet dignity that Żuławski allows her to have.

The film has an interesting look - the costumes the gangsters wear have a particularly 80s gaudy Scarface kind of vibe, and many scenes filmed by French cinematographer Jean-François Robin are from extremely low angles, giving the settings the particular "where God would live" massive overbearing immensity that Żuławski was demanding from him. The colour and lighting scheme is very deliberately projecting the mood and intensity of the moment. Robin had never worked with Żuławski before, and found the entire experience unique and fascinating - not only in a visual sense, but in the way Żuławski would push his actors, lashing out at them not in particular dissatisfaction but to try and push them to give their absolute best performance. The director of photography would also be challenged by the sheer amount of movement and speed of the action (at times it must have felt like shooting a musical), and was impressed by the way Żuławski would deliberately fill the background of shots when close-ups of the actors were called for.

Although the script was always being reworked and changed, an interesting written contribution to the film comes from French lyricist and anarchist Étienne Roda-Gil, the only screenwriting credit he ever had. We can perhaps sense that much of the lyrical and poetic dialogue comes from him - and there is a sharp political edge to many of the lines that come from a variety of the characters. The gangsters constantly disparage France's political and financial elite, who they see as arms dealers and oligarchs. Anton Chekhov's play The Seagull and Dostoevsky's The Idiot gives an added aura of sociological and existential concern that strongly influence much of what comes from all the characters in the film. Żuławski wasn't the kind of director to just see what happened once the cameras had started rolling, so his exactitude points to his film being a fairly complex and choreographed work that belies what at times looks simply silly. It does bring me back to what Kat Ellinger was saying about this "not being one of Żuławski's most accessible films." People were always going to have some trouble with it - and that extended to most critics at the time it was released.

In the meantime, as far as scoring is concerned, Stanislas Syrewicz provides the film with a very synthesized, eighties kind of feel to proceedings when things become intense, but shifts with the mood and feel of the film as time goes by. The imposition of frenzied passionate dialogue during "Voudras, Quand Tu Voudras" gives an added sense of how emotionally wrenching Mary's arc of the story really is. Overall though, this isn't a movie that confines itself forever to looking like a cultural artifact from that time period, despite the score and costumes. Instead, it exists very much apart from any specific era just because of it's unique style and theatrical sensibility. Time has been kind, with many reviewers for various film media lending a much more approving eye to L'Amour Braque than they did back when it was released, although as far as the average filmgoer is concerned anger and confusion come to the fore half the time.

Personally, for me, L'Amour Braque has had to overcome an initial impulse I had to reject it outright. I had to watch it again, this time fully aware of the kind of film it was, and can honestly say that this is the kind of movie where I'll notice something different every time I watch it - there is more going on here than I can take in and process all at once. Every impulse the mind can have transmits itself outwardly through the people who populate Żuławski's world, and nothing is inhibited - which can overload me unless I psychologically filter what I'm seeing and hearing. It's a double edged sword, because while it's nice to have an abundance of detail and significance to intrigue the mind it's sometimes at the expense of simple beauty. While energy and movement can make sure something is never dull, stillness and tranquility can at leave give a sense of contrast to the violent and fluid. If I see someone laughing really loudly I deduce that they're happy, if I see someone laughing really loud for an hour without stopping, I deduce that they're crazy. Perhaps that's the whole point of Mad Love - that love is insanity, that life is insanity and perhaps our very existence is insanity. But I really suspect that the whole point of this film is complex and voluminous and will be forever beyond my grasp.

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Until someone else mentioned it in the thread before, I didn't realize that The Seagull was the name of the play being performed in the film, and that it was a real thing.

I was actually quite confused as to why some characters kept bringing up seagulls, seemingly out of nowhere. It didn't seem out of place for someone to be obsessed with those savage sea rats though, so I didn't really question it haha.

The Secret of Roan Innish (1994) -

Don't have a whole lot to say about this one. I appreciated that the film avoided sentimentality, the flashbacks/stories were kind of intriguing, and some of the scenic shots looked fine (I was only impressed with a few shots though). For the most part though, I felt kin of distant from the film and I don't have a whole lot to praise it for. I think the film was attempting to coast on the strength of its atmosphere - which can work really well if done right - though I wouldn't give much praise to the atmosphere other than "A few scenes are kind of good". I liked the flashbacks of the island a decent bit, the scene with the boat in the fog was cool, the ending was pretty good, and I guess a couple shots of the seals are fine, but that's about it for me. Maybe if I found the story or the characters more compelling, I'd enjoy it more. Who knows. As it stood, it's fine and there isn't a whole lot to criticize it for, but I also wasn't engaged with a lot of the film. If I were to watch it again, I'd suspect I'd either like it a bit more or about the same.

Next Up: Shura

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IMDb
Letterboxd

I can't tell if this is a joke or not because potato salad is quite European and I've never seen it associated in a negative way with anyone who isn't German or Irish lol.

The stereotype is that blacks make the best potato salad.

https://www.google.com/search?q=blac...nt=safari#ip=1

I personally wouldn't call it negative but it could be depending on how a person's mind works.

Oh well. With this, Hard Times and Chimes at Midnight, I specialize in picking movies that make people go...





I plan on watching it this weekend. It's been a few years since I've seen it, so I'll see if my regard for it holds up.

For what it's worth, I enjoyed Hard Times quite a bit and I rated Chimes At Midnight a , so I've enjoyed most of your picks so far.

Cool. Well, they can't all be zingers.

The Secret of Roan Innish, Hard Times and Chimes at Midnight.

I liked them all myself. I really liked The Secret of Roan Innish, because it wasn't trying to be the typical movie. It didn't try to impress with fancy smancy camera work or uber dramatic acting. It aimed to be a film version of an old Irish folk tale that would've been told by the elder of the family as they gather around the hearth on a frosty winter eve.

I've not seen anything quite like it before, which to me is a treat.

Glad to hear. I like being surprised by movies I've never heard of before, so that's how I decide what movie to pick.
Yes, that means I stalk (those of you who are on) Letterboxd to see what you have or haven't seen.

I've thought about logging films on Letterboxd but I've seen too many movies and don't have the time to log them all. I usually end up having not seen the bulk of the HoF movies.

Out of the 16 movies here, I've only seen 6 and I really can't count Raiders of the Lost Ark or Apocalypse Now as I seen them many years ago and didn't remember a thing. Even Dolores Claiborne I had forgotten most of it including how it was resolved.

You can import your imdb rate movies over if you've used imdb.

That's good to know, but I never rated films at IMDB either.

When I was a little kid I kept a notebook and wrote down every single movie I watched till I was about twelve when I came to the realization that a lot of films I saw on TV were Edited/Censored that, technically, I didn't REALLY watch them. So I stopped. If I remember correctly, I was on my second (maybe third) notebook with double columns, both sides of the paper used and it was somewhere in the hundreds at that point. Possibly around 4 0r 500.
Keeping up with the Lists here on MoFo is the closest I've ever come to making lists.

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What I actually said to win MovieGal's heart:
- I might not be a real King of Kinkiness, but I make good pancakes

~Mr Minio

I can't count the number of times revenge has seemed cathartic and generally respectable in a movie. Rarely have I taken the time to reflect on the toll it takes on the person exacting vengeance - which often includes murder and destruction. "They had it coming" - it's not real life, where I most often go so far as to take issue with the death penalty - even in the most heinous of circumstances. Riggs and Murtaugh in the Lethal Weapon series of films seem to kill more people than the most experienced of combat troops, and they seem pretty much fine with it. Vengeance and killing are made out to be an almost natural mode of being - an essential balance where wrongs are righted and a ledger squared is the perfect panacea to a troubled conscience. Then there's Shura, and it's tell-tale English language alternate titles, Pandemonium, Bloodshed and Demons.

Here we have a world where vengeance destroys the person seeking recompense - to their very soul. A portentous setting sun, a time-lapse shot that will be Shura's one and only colour sequence, shows us in a very precise way where this film is headed. Toshio Matsumoto and director of photography Tatsuo Suzuki will drown the rest of this film in unrelenting darkness, with stark black shadows hemorrhaging over everything - a blanket of dream-like night the likes you rarely see in a film. It fits this story perfectly - Matsumoto has adapted an old Japanese play, Kamikakete Sango taisetsu, which was written by Tsuruya Nanboku in 1825 - one with unrelenting darkness, despair and tragedy. He creates a samurai film that delves into horror and makes us question the very veracity of revenge. Conversations (albeit one-sided ones) with severed heads, the murder of infants, general slaughter, poisoning, slashing and strangling are the physical results of psychological anguish unleased.

Shura and Toshio Matsumoto don't seem to be very widely known subjects. Matsumoto himself directed very few feature-length films - four in total by my count - but those he did seem to be highly regarded. After hearing high praise for his 1969 film Funeral Parade of Roses I feel perplexed and intrigued by him and his much more numerable short films (he wrote a screenplay for a 1961 feature film called The Catch/Shiiku - which looks especially interesting.) There are wonderful little things in Shura that I rarely see in other features, such as a visual illustration of how characters think ahead, such as people do in real life. Sometimes these forward and backward jumps last only moments, but there are times when a whole scene will reset and we become aware that what we've just seen has been a supposition of what might happen by a character in the film. These thoughts might reveal fears, trepidation and even ego mixed with hope. I found it to be a great added benefit to the film.

The film opens with a dream, which is obviously some kind of warning for our samurai protagonist in this, Gengobei (Katsuo Nakamura) but it tells us nothing specific and it's easy to misread. Death and carnage might be headed Gengobei's way if he doesn't have a level head, and unfortunately he's in love with a geisha called Koman (Yasuko Sanjo) who is distracting him from his duty, as his faithful servant Hachiemon (Masao Imafuku) continually reminds him. Gengobei at first seems a reckless and impulsive fellow, but as the story unfolds we do get a sense that he does mean to stay true to his task of joining the 47 ronin avenging their master (featured in Chūshingura.) Eventually though, he's tricked, cheated and humiliated and this precedes one of the most violent and blood-drenched murderous revenge rampages I've ever seen. While at first I really did want Gengobei (later revealed to be travelling under a different name) to have his vengeance, events darken to such an extent where I fervently wished he'd forgone the urge. Vengeance changes Gengobei to the point where he becomes a demon.

Much of the film unfolds without the addition of any kind of traditional score or musical accompaniment, except for periods where customary Japanese music underscore a moment of great dramatic import, such as when Hachiemon provides an ultimate, kind act of great significance for Gengobei late in the film. Sometimes there's the very light addition of a sanshin (or similar instrument) and a demon-like shiver of sound towards the very end, underscoring the horror. The dramatic and visual intensity of the film makes the lack of score barely noticeable. It's a really gripping film that shook my inner senses - a meditation on the push and pull between duty and personal desire, slaking a thirst for vengeance despite the spiritual cost of doing so. There's also a sad sense of the futility that much of life entails. A futility we often push to the very furthest reaches of our minds. "I have lived a useless life" one character remarks, on the verge of suicide - and at that moment it seems to be the very reason for being, though I'd simply suggest a balance between the personal and our obligations.

I really enjoyed this film's style, the performances on display and it's story. I'm partial to tales that delve into the darkest of corners, and there are moments in Shura that really shuddered my senses without giving me the feeling that I was watching something exploitative. This is one film that really deserves to be much more well known than it currently is, and I'll do my utmost to spread the word about this and Toshio Matsumoto. It's great to have something in this genre that doesn't glorify violence, but instead makes that violence appear almost like a spreading sickness that only brings misery upon both the victim and perpetrator. It's destined to stay in my memory and be a point of comparison between other Japanese films of the era, although to compare it to other "samurai" films would seem unfair simply due to the fact that this doesn't feel like and an out-and-out samurai film. It's more like a Shakespearean tragedy or Greek drama, and harks back to early Japanese theater.

A chilling tale on one samurai's transformation into a demon, fueled by his shame, indignation and rage - and a film that really deserves to be much more well known and appreciated.