This Tuesday night, we will not watch a complete film in class. Instead, you have the option of choosing any one of the following British films made during the 1950s-60s, all of which are available on Youtube, and watching the film you choose. You should then write about this film in Forum 3. We will discuss British filmmaking on Thursday.
Films:
We Are the Lambeth Boys dir. Karl Weisz (1958). Whole Film: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVaU8Sr_qXk
Look Back in Anger (1959) Complete Film: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOKPDR-zS04
Room at the Top (1959) Complete Film: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rw0Br358Qt0
Victim (1961): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7Nzrq1jKNM&feature=related
Alfie (1966) Complete Film: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzQTF–oQ-U
Isadora dir. Karel Reisz, starring Vanessa Redgrave, 1968, Complete Film: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8nQS3TRzIs
You can also watch Lindsay Anderson’s short film O Dreamland here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39XAINmKwAk
In addition to writing about the film you watched, you can also write about anything else being discussed in class if you want to. Some possible topics:
1. Recently, we discussed the influence of Neorrealism on the cinema of the 1950s in Spain (Muerte de un ciclista), France (Night and Fog), and Latin America (Los olvidados, Araya, Modesta). What thoughts do you have about any of these ideas and/or films?
2. Tuesday’s class focuses on filmmaking in France in the late 1940s and early 50s, and on the French director Robert Bresson. Any thoughts about ideas discussed and films seen in class?
Deadline: Wednesday, February 1, 12:00 Midnight.
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I decided to watch Alfie since I admit it was the first one that sprung to mind because of the Jude Law remake. I haven’t seen the remake, but I don’t think the remake would do much justice after seeing the original. The film follows Michael Caine, who is Alfie, a womanizer, prick, bastard, heartless, etc. Who grows emotionally and eventually changes his ways. I do like the approach in the beginning regarding the forth wall break and the no title sequence, which I found rather intriguing and unique. Michael Caine’s character is very interesting and his tips on how to be a womanizer are very funny and intriguing as well. The shots for the most part are very standard and not all that unusual, what makes the movie is Michael Caine’s Alfie and how the character changes after the struggle he faced through the movie. The ending where a young man is in bed with Ruby, it comes full circle because he is now on the other side of the relationship. I did like the ending and the movie as a whole, the character study was very interesting and Michael Caine did a splendid job.
Alfie is a movie with a very different style, in which the viewer is included as a participant to whom Alfie speak directly. In this communication between the lead actor and the viewer, the actor not only plays the role of a narrator, he also communicates in an informal mode to give explanations about his actions and give his opinions. Here we can see a very liberal movie, in where Alfie plays a “swinger” role, self-confident and conformal with his life, something like the character of Tony in The servant. This is similar to the styles of life in the 60′s, in which English people act very liberal in a democracy, which is used as a reason to act liberal, as Alfie said to one of the ladies. Something that I like most was the diversity and contradictory use of genres. The movie starts as a comedy and ends as a drama. This was a very good acting by Michael Cain.
Although Alfie was innovative in the theme used, I think The servant have more style in terms of the photography direction (with the exception of the close-up used when Alfie cries, that was very good).
La película Alfie trata de un hombre que le gusta la vida superficial sexual, sin ataduras emocionales. Un tema que hoy en día nos parece muy gastado y ya cansa pero para la época de los 60 era necesario presentarla. La conducta sexual era más abierta, por lo que había más problemas sociales como el tener hijos indeseados y el aborto. Al principio se presento una asociación entre los perros y la pareja de amantes. El perro le quito la perrita al otro perro y esto me pareció chistoso porque cuando un hombre y una mujer hacen esto se les llama “perro o perra”. Alfie le habla al público, haciéndolo cómplice de sus actos, algo que de cierta forma ayuda a que el publico acepte sus actos a pesar de que se saben que son malos y traen malas consecuencias. A través de la película Alfie quiere cambiar su estilo de vida pero al final termina solo, y se queda con la duda sobre “¿de que trata todo esto?”. Tal vez querían llevar el mensaje de lo superficial que es este estilo de vida aunque por otro lado pienso que también da ideas de cómo llevarla. En fin, como explique anteriormente el tema se llevo al público por las conductas de la sociedad en Inglaterra en esa época y educar de cierta forma sobre el tema del aborto.
También quería comentar que me gusto mucho el concepto de Araya, y quisiera investigar más sobre otras películas latinoamericanas neorrealistas. Ver Modesta me ayudo a tener una idea sobre los comienzos del cine en Puerto Rico. Me gusto ver como era la gente en esa época y es triste que no conozcamos sobre estas películas. Quisiera investigar mas sobre este tema también, pues si supiéramos mas sobre las películas puertorriqueñas del pasado podríamos tener una base que nos ayude a crear mejores películas que nos identifiquen.
I joined the club and also watched Alfie. It was interesting to see an early Michael Caine film and compared it with a more modern one and see how Caine, has evolved as an actor. Don’t get me wrong, Alfie was genius and I also think that even though Jude Law is a good actor, the remake wouldn’t do justice to the original. Alfie was one of the early movies that treated the topic of playboys and gigolos that rolled through life in the way that they wanted, sadly that recipe has been copied a thousand times resulting in cliche-ful horrific films. I found interesting that every now and then Alfie looked into the camera and talked, like the audience was represented in the camera which made it a little bit more personal. Alfie was smooth and calculating which made him a great and entertaining character which Michael Caine portrayed really well.
I also watched a bit of O Dreamland, personally I love horror films, and it might sound gory and gruesome but I liked the idea of an amusement park of that kind. Traditional in a repetitive way tends to bore you, but when you add this twist to the story, it adds a whole new flavor to it.
It was very interesting to see and experience visually how film changed so much in such little time. It reminded me a lot of the radical changes that started happening in the world of art when the Academy of Art (I think that’s what it was called) started trying to define very strictly what art was in ways that limited quite profoundly the artists. Surrealism and other artistic movements came as a product of these impositions and it was quite a 180 on the art world. This radical change in British cinema reminds me of it, because priorities (for lack of a better word) are changing. I was fascinated by the movie “The Servant” because it’s not at all what one expects, not even from reading the title. What would’ve been expected (because of the types of movies that came before and how they were organized) was for the aristocratic character to be a man who’s got it all figured out, who looks up to no one and looks down to most people, especially his servant, whom he actually asks to sort his life out for him in the movie, completely breaking free of the whole archetype set in the past. The servant character also does a great job in pulling a 180 on the whole servant thing. He sort of rebels, thanks to his master’s somewhat childish behavior, and somehow ends up on equal grounds with him, treating him more like a brother than anything else (they fight, they laugh, they party, they drink, they play, etc.). It’s a mesh of social positions and psychologically twisted characters, and it’s quite fascinating and refreshing, not the same old formula.