Le Deuxième Souffle

Le Deuxième Souffle (The Criterion Collection DVD, 2008)
Directed by Jean-Pierre Melville
France, 1966
In French with English subtitles

Although I haven't posted about a movie here in months, I guess this is as good a place as any to announce that I'll be coming out of retirement for a half-dozen or so DVD reviews to fulfill my contractual obligations for this year's Orbis Terrarum Film Mini-Challenge.  First up is Jean-Pierre Melville's 1966 Le Deuxième Souffle (Second Wind), a bleak French gangster flick that follows aging fugitive Gu Minda (Lino Ventura) from Paris to Marseille as he tries to escape the arrogant Inspector Blot (Diabolique's Paul Meurisse) as the clock of his life winds down.  While all the usual Melville themes (destiny, friendship, honor, violence) and trademark flourishes (a highly-orchestrated robbery, existential gunplay) make their morally ambiguous appearances here, something about the film feels a little flat despite a standout cast and some edgy scenes involving abusive police interrogation techniques that were supposedly altered for being too similar to what the French army was doing in Algeria at the time.  Is it worth seeing?  Sure.  But if you're new to Melville, you have got to check out 1967's Le Samouraï, 1969's L'Armée des ombres (Army of Shadows) or 1970's Le Cercle rouge first to understand why this uncompromising cinéaste was once known as "the father of the New Wave" and "the poet of the underworld."  In the meantime, I'll now go back to enjoying that handsome Criterion cover art that has made this blog look positively Positif throughout the duration of this post!  (http://www.criterion.com/)

Jean-Pierre Melville

More on Melville:

Le Doulos (1962)

Army of Shadows (1969)

Vampyr

Vampyr (Criterion DVD, 2008)
Directed by Carl Th. Dreyer
Denmark, 1932
In German with English subtitles

Carl Theodor Dreyer's 1932 Vampyr, his first sound film, is as much an art statement as it is a vampire movie. Loosely based on a pair of 19th-century short stories by Sheridan Le Fanu, this recently restored print pairs a surrealistic narrative structure with Dreyer's usual compositional brilliance to create a true shadow world in tune with its subject. While the odd, intentionally disjointed plot has to do with the fate of a character named Allan Gray, an occult student/enthusiast who wanders into a strange inn on the outskirts of Paris late one night and immediately begins to suffer the effects of a series of supernatural encounters, one of the ways in which it breaks new ground is that the audience is never sure whether Gray is delusional, dreaming, or perhaps already dead (shots like the one below, where the character appears to see himself in a coffin, are of little help). Real life aristocrat Nicolas de Gunzburg gives a woozy, somnambulistic performance as Gray that's just perfect for the part, and Dreyer and his crew accentuate the oneiric elements in the script with a succession of images--ghost couples dancing to a band of ghost musicians, a gravedigger "undigging" a grave, a female vampire victim's carnivorous smile--noteworthy for their austere beauty. Maybe not the fastest-paced film ever--but the Man Ray-like visuals more than make up for it, trust me. (http://www.criterion.com/)

Note: I haven't seen all the extras on this two-disc set yet, but what I have seen has been impressive. Highlights so far include Jorgen Roos' Carl Th. Dreyer, a 1966 documentary on the director, and Casper Tybjerg's "visual essay" on the artists and artwork that influenced Dreyer's style on this film.

My Best Fiend

Mein liebster Feind (Anchor Bay Entertainment DVD, 2002)
Directed by Werner Herzog
Germany, 1999
In German and English with English subtitles

Although I'm a huge Herzog fan to begin with, I have a special fondness for this tremendously funny and utterly compelling 1999 documentary about his bizarre working relationship with the great actor, legendary temper tantrum thrower, and raving egomaniac Klaus Kinski. Recalling the five feature films the pair made together over the course of the years, Herzog takes the viewer along for an anecdotal wild ride to the locations where some of their stormiest collaborations were filmed: the jungles of Peru for Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo, the Czech Republic for Woyzeck, etc. Kinski usually comes off as an out of control but brilliant ass, a prima donna prone to hostile fits of anger whenever he'd forgotten his lines or stopped being the center of attention, but Herzog readily admits that the two needed each other to bring out their best. Watching this portrait, it's clear that the two had mutual respect for one another and at least occasional affection as well. Ironically, My Best Fiend also sports multiple confessions from the director, ostensibly the sane one, of plots to kill his belligerent star--the first for threatening to leave Aguirre, the Wrath of God just before the movie was completed ("I told him I had a rifle and by the time he'd reach the next bend in the river, there'd be eight bullets in his head and the ninth one would be mine") and another when he became so angry with Kinski on a different film that he decided to firebomb his house ("This was prevented only by the diligence of his Alsatian shepherd"). While Kinski died of natural causes in 1991, Herzog's offbeat tribute to his cinematic partner in crime has to rank as one of their most memorable projects ever. Rating: 5/5 stars! (http://www.anchorbayentertainment.com/)

Herzog (left) and Kinski share a quiet moment on the set

Orbis Terrarum 2009 Challenge

While I like reading about reading challenges way more than I like participating in them, I have some good news about my absolute favorite challenge of them all. Bethany of the book-crazy B&b ex libris blog is hosting the Orbis Terrarum Challenge again this year, a 10-month extravaganza dedicated to reading "10 different books, written by 10 different authors, from 10 different countries" beginning March 1st. Although the so-called rules thankfully haven't changed all that much from the 2008 version of the challenge, Bethany has livened things up by adding optional bilingual, film, poetry, and short story mini-challenges for those who are interested. You can check out the blog's dedicated page post here to sign up for the challenge yourself or here if you just want to keep up with all the updates throughout the year. In the meantime, a few of the things I'm looking forward to reading/watching for this year's challenge are listed below. I'll link all my other OT 2009 Challenge reviews here once things get going in March. ¡Hasta pronto!

Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina): a likely candidate for double duty in the poetry and short story mini-challenges.

Margaret Mazzantini, Non ti muovere (Italy, 2001): I'm going to try to read this romanzo in Italian for the bilingual mini-challenge, but unfortunately my Italian is basically limited to food and wine vocabulary and a few other helpful words like "aiuto"!

Carlos Saura, Cría cuervos (Spain, 1976): One of my favorite movies of all time, this was recently released in a deluxe US DVD edition from Criterion. A natural for the film mini-challenge.

Click here to jump to my OT list from last year.

1) BRAZIL: Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (review)
2) MEXICO: José Emilio Pacheco, Las batallas en el desierto [Battles in the Desert] (review)
3) CHILE: José Donoso, Historia personal del "boom" [The Boom in Spanish American Literature: A Personal History] (review)
4) SPAIN: Enrique Vila-Matas, Bartleby y compañía [Bartleby & Co.] (review)
5) LEBANON: Hanan al-Shaykh, The Story of Zahra (review)
6) SUDAN: Tayeb Salih, Season of Migration to the North (review)
7) PERU: Mario Vargas Llosa, La guerra del fin del mundo [The War of the End of the World] (review)
8) NORWAY: Sigrid Undset, Kristin Lavransdatter (links forthcoming)
9) HONDURAS: Horacio Moya Castellanos, Senselessness [Insensatez] (review)
10) COLOMBIA: Fernando Vallejo, La Virgen de los Sicarios [Our Lady of the Assassins] (review)

1) MÉXICO: José Emilio Pacheco, Las batallas en el desierto (reseña)
2) CHILE: José Donoso, Historia general del "boom" (reseña)
3) ESPAÑA: Enrique Vila-Matas, Bartleby y compañía (reseña)
4) PERU: Mario Vargas Llosa, La guerra del fin del mundo (reseña)
5) COLOMBIA: Fernado Vallejo, La Virgen de los Sicarios (reseña)

1) GERMANY: Werner Herzog, My Best Fiend [Mein liebster Feind] (review)
2) DENMARK: Carl Theodor Dreyer, Vampyr (review)
3) FRANCE: Jean-Pierre Melville, Le Deuxième Souffle (review)

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