Surrealism and cinema

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDu9EEIJltI&]

Funeral Parade of Roses is a 1969 Japanese film directed by Toshio Matsumoto.

Tip of the hat to Girish:

The first, historic path of surrealism and cinema must be (according to AM) broadly defined to include not just officially acknowledged ‘classics’ by René Clair, Germaine Dulac & Antonin Artaud, Joseph Cornell, Marcel Duchamp, etc., but also certain films by Robert Benayoun, Ado Kyrou, Nelly Kaplan, Walerian Borowczyk, Toshio Matsumoto, Jean Rouch, etc. –Girish

I am currently reading Le Surréalisme au cinéma, which is often mentioned as the standard work on surrealist cinema.It is an excellent introduction to cult cinema tout court. Perhaps more on this later.

They Call Us Misfits

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFCy2xP3Vuw&]

Dom kallar oss mods (English title: They Call Us Misfits) is a 1968 Swedish documentary film directed by Stefan Jarl and Jan Lindqvist. The film, the first in what would become a trilogy, is an uncompromising account of the life of two alienated teenagers.

The Mods from the original title Dom kallar oss mods indicates that Mods in Sweden were not the Mods we know from British subculture. The youths depicted would have been described in English speaking countries as as hippies.


Cultissime!

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zd6D8PU95qU]

Buffet Froid (1979) – Bertrand Blier

Context of clip: Depardieu has stabbed Carmet, Depardieu denies, “no I could’nt have done it, I just arrived”. Carmet does not seem to mind dying. Depardieu asks: “how does it feel”. Carmet answers: “Like a sink draining”. At the end Carmet offers Depardieu to take his knife back and says: “You’d better because your fingerprints are on them.” Depardieu thanks him. Spoiler warning: Carmet lives.

Buffet froid is a 1979 French film, written and directed by Bertrand Blier, and starring Gérard Depardieu, Carole Bouquet, Bernard Blier and Jean Carmet.The plot of this film is extremely complex and elusive, for the simple reason that we are left at odds as to the motivation of the characters to perform acts that are systematically the opposite of what is expected of them. Thus, the police inspector allows murders, commits murders himself and pretends not being occupied with his profession when off duty.

The film owes much of its ideological framework to surrealism, re-enforced by an ambience of mystery et theatricality, very similar to the work of Luis Buñuel, who was known to punctuate his work with numerous « gratuitous » murders. We are also reminded of the absurd theatre of Alfred Jarry and Eugène Ionesco.

The location of the metro station of the RER of La Défense, then ending its construction phase and not yet receiving its 170 000 daily employees as is the case today, highly contributes to the atmosphere of the opening sequence of the film: a dehumanized urban space, cold and anxiety-ridden, filmed by night, the only encounters to be expected those of marginalized human beings. All “urban” scenes were filmed in Créteil, in areas under construction at the time.

Bertrand Blier reunites a sublime trio, with his fetish actor Gérard Depardieu), a un-police officer (Bernard Blier) and an assassin strangler of women played by Jean Carmet, all at the peak of their careers.

Digression: Happy birthday Roky Erickson.

One of the best films ever

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToBWndME8ds]

Les Valseuses (Going Places) (1974) Bertrand Blier.

The road trip of two drifters (Depardieu and Dewaere), who take from life as if it were a supermarket. They are joined by Miou-Miou who is on her own search for seemingly unattainable sexual pleasure. The film illustrates the frenetics of the sexual revolution and morality after May 1968.