The Narrow Margin (1952)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

The Narrow Margin (1952) – R. Fleischer

Incredibly taut and suspenseful B-movie film noir that makes up for plot holes (apparent later not sooner) with tough dialogue and hand-held camerawork. A hard-boiled cop must escort a gangster's moll across country by train for her appearance in front of the grand jury in L. A. She is not grateful and to make matters worse, the mob's gunmen are on the train too. Highly recommended.

Close-Up (1990)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Close-Up (1990) – A. Kiarostami

Kiarostami's film works on a number of different levels: 1) there is the surface-level story of a man who naively impersonates a famous film director and goes on trial for fraud; 2) the fact that Kiarostami asked the original people involved in the case to play themselves in a re-enactment adds another level -- are they acting as they really did or as they would like to be perceived?; 3) there is the level of "cultural difference" where we foreigners are trying to understand Iran through the film; 4) there is Kiarostami's direction which playfully defies cinematic convention (withholding key information, focusing on trivial details, incorporating technical flaws); 5) there is the level of cinema as topic raising questions about film directors as celebrities and the ways in which film can influence an audience. Kiarostami's magic is to turn a simple story, simply shot, into something rich and profound.

When A Woman Ascends The Stairs (1960)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (1960) – M. Naruse

Naruse's emotionally draining tale of the struggles of a 30 something bar hostess who longs for something different is somehow still uplifting (in its tribute to resilience). The plot may be melodramatic (and a case in point of women's trials in a male-dominated world) but Hideko Takamine rises above it with dignity, subtlety, and, yes, grace.(The rest of the cast are none too shabby either). The viewer is suspended in time, on the edge of the knife, awaiting Takamine's fortune.

Le Samourai (1967)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Le Samourai (1967) – J.-P. Melville

Watching this again (and again), especially after seeing many of Melville's other great films (Le Doulos, Le Deuxieme Souffle, Army in the Shadows, Bob Le Flambeur) suggests how different Le Samourai is, despite its surface similarities. Here, we have a lone protagonist, very inscrutable, rather than the interconnected gang or family locked into the inevitable mechanics of the plot. Here, the final action comes with a big question mark over it -- perhaps his sense of honour leads him to save La Pianiste? But we never quite know whether she is complicit in all that has gone down. To compare this to Bresson is not understating things (although it makes understatement prominent) -- the essence of cool, in detail, in colour, in theme.

Touchez Pas au Grisbi (1954)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Touchez Pas Au Grisbi (1954) – J. Becker

Jean Gabin is great as the world-weary gangster ready to retire after finishing his last big score (before the movie starts). Becker's film eats the cliches (or originated them) and spews them out in a perfectly controlled collapse of the best laid plans. 

Ordet (1955)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Ordet (1955) – C. T. Dreyer

A movie about religious faith, lack of faith, and competing (Christian) faiths. When one character has trouble with his sanity, another says it was Kierkegaard that did it to him (so you know what kind of film this is). Dreyer is the master of the slow pan, never really showing us the whole of a room (and all of the people in it); in one shot he circles entirely around two characters, slowly so it took a while for me to notice. In the end, the leap of faith does prove warranted, but what happens next?

Watched again in 2019: For all its starkness, it feels intellectually alive and almost supernaturally so (by the end).  Would that it were so? Jonathan Rosenbaum alerted me to the fact that the tracking shot circling Johannes and Maren is not exactly what it seems to be -- we don't see their backs! An early miracle?
  

Venom and Eternity (1951)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Traité de bave et d'éternité (Venom and Eternity) (1951) – I. Isou

Self-referential debut of a new kind of film-making, one that disconnects the audio and visual components (Discrepant Cinema) and violently attacks the raw film stock. In three parts, variously a wide-ranging philosophical tract about cinema, an alienated free love story, and a series of letterist poems wherein the sound of unintelligible letters is the point. So jammed full of ideas (and "boring" stock footage) that it makes you alive to possibilities and nostalgic for 1951. (Obviously an influence on Assayas' Irma Vep...but also on Japanese "rock" band Ruins?)