Vertigo (1958)

(I blogged about this film originally in 2015)

At a glance: Director: Alfred Hitchcock Starring: James Stewart, Kim Novak Genre: film noir, psychological, thriller Release: 1958, USA Length: 2 hours IMDB: 8.3 Review: -

Plot: Our protagonist, Scottie (James Stewart) is is a detective with a career ahead (played by a man in his 50s for some reason) who has a traumatic experience when his colleague dies of falling off a rooftop during a chase. Scottie develops a fear of heights and retires until an acquaintance asks him to follow and take care of his wife Madeleine (Kim Novak), who recently has started to act mentally unstable. She believes she has been possessed by her dead great-grandmother's ghost, who committed suicide. While looking after her, Scottie falls for Madeleine...

Theme: In spite of being a thriller, the story is about a tragic love or rather the tragic love of two broken people.

Content: Unlike today, the big twist of the story takes place in the middle of the story instead of waiting till the end. Hitchcock did this to help us understand Madeleine's perspective. The studio first removed this twist but then edited it back.

Form: To achieve the visual expression of the fear of height, the most noticeable is the so-called dolly zoom technique, where the camera is moved backwards while they are also zooming in. They say the film is also innovative in several editing methods. The nightmare-sequence mixed with animation is quite eye-catching even with today's standards. Music is much more than just background music, it is part of the images.

Impression: If the twist had not taken place in the middle of the story, my surprise would have definitely been bigger, but then I might have missed Madeleine's perspective.  Well, not as if I did get it now... Maybe it would have been more effective if it had been shot from Madeleine's perspective.

Trivia:

• James Stewart had a traditional military family heritage, so he was one of the first stars to enlist when the USA entered World War II. He did actually take part in real missions as a pilot and was quite successful in his military career as well.
  

Citizen Kane (1941)

(I blogged about this film originally in 2015)

At a glance: Director: Orson Welles Starring: - Genre: drama Release: 1941, USA Length: 2 hours IMDB: 8.3 Review: -

Plot: Rosebud - whispers Kane (Orson Welles), the media tycoon with his last breath. A short piece of news is made about his life but it's way too boring, so a journalist is told to investigate his life, including the meaning of "rosebud". So he visits all the important people in Kane's life...

Theme: The film presents the fictive life of the media tycoon (strongly resembling William Randolph Hearst), and we can see into his personality and motives. In the meantime we also learn about how mean the media and politics work.

Content: They say the narrative was innovative in its time, because it showed us different perspectives of the same thing. In this plot it served the function of getting Kane know. It was also unusual to have flashbacks and non-linear narrative: we did not see Kane's life in chronological order but in a way to deepen our knowledge of him. For this reason the film is compared to the style of Marcel Proust.

Form: The film is famous for its innovative visual elements, particularly the deep focus. For, me, however, is most apparent the composition of the scenes, the way characters are emphasized with lightning or positioning. For my delight, it did not lack expressionist elements as well.

Impression: Its hard to criticize the film, both the content and the visuals are cleverly made, but for me it lacked the catharsis. It had many great scenes, but none of them could really reach me.

Trivia:

• Welles was considered a young genius, that's the reason why he could make a film without any restrictions. He had his own theater company by the age of 22; he was 23 when he directed his famous radio play - thanks to this latter success did he get the opportunity to direct his first film at 26.
• Hearst, however, was not happy about the film and did everything to stop its release - this caused initial failures, but eventually the film was a success.
  

Introduction

Hi there... I had never been into films before. I didn't really go to cinema often. In my early teens I rent a VHS tape every week, but those were mostly silly commercial, not even well-known movies. I saw my first serious films around the millennium, while I was waiting for porn (for younger people: before the Internet, some cable channels switched to adult programs after 23:00 in Eastern Europe). It was around 2010, when I first watched deliberately several art films, because I was bored and Metacritic said those were good ones. Well, not for my taste back then.

Anyway, eventually by 2014 because of movie references I encountered in various shows, such as Family Guy, I started to feel the need to learn about them and quickly assembled a list of the best movies based on "best of" lists. First it was about 30 movies and I got to like the idea of watching movies, so I continued with the same method and started to blog about them in 2015.

By 2018 I saw over 500 films, but I realised that most of them were from the Western civilization, dominantly from the USA, and that bothered me. So starting from 2018 I tried to balance out this inequality and began to watch intensively African, Arabic, Asian and Latin movies.  In the same year I also realised that instead of cringing at the past, I should focus on films which are closer to me both in time and space.

Long story short, while this blog is new, I've been doing this for 5 years and seen over a thousand films from Bangladesh, Bulgaria, Columbia Mauritania to Niger. I'm not good at writing, I'm not pro at films, but I think I have considerable experience. You'll see here movies from all across the time and space. My reviews are not critical works, just personal reviews, but I will try to understand films both contentwise and how they express that visually.