Amos Vogel: Film as a Subversive Art

  • Robert Frank – The Sin of Jesus (1961)

    Robert Frank1961-1970Amos Vogel: Film as a Subversive ArtArthouseDramaUSA
    The Sin of Jesus (1961)
    The Sin of Jesus (1961)

    Quote:
    The Sin of Jesus was based on the story of Isaac Babel, a woman on a chicken farm who spends her days working at an egg-sorting machine. “I’m the only woman here.” She is pregnant, her husband spends his days lying in bed, and his friends encourage him to go out on the town with them. The woman talks to herself as she works, lost in the monotony of human existence. She counts the passing days in the same way she counts eggs. Even extraordinary events, such as the appearance of Jesus Christ in the barn, go under the stream of this melancholy solipsism.Read More »

  • Manfred Vosz – Stadtführer Für Bonn Und Umgebung AKA Guidebook to Bonn and Environs (1969)

    1961-1970Amos Vogel: Film as a Subversive ArtDocumentaryGermanyManfred VoszShort Film
    Stadtführer Für Bonn Und Umgebung (1969)
    Stadtführer Für Bonn Und Umgebung (1969)

    Quote:
    Inspired by Thorndike’s similar East German films,
    this is a carefully researched, professionally executed
    indictment of the West German government bureaucracy,
    proving that many of its members — individually shown
    and identified — had served in the same capacity under
    the Nazis. A barrage of official documents, incriminating
    photographs and Nazi newsreels substantiate the argument.Read More »

  • Yasujiro Ozu – Ohayô aka Good Morning (1959)

    Yasujiro Ozu1951-1960Amos Vogel: Film as a Subversive ArtComedyDramaJapan
    Ohayô (1959)
    Ohayô (1959)

    Quote:
    “Sooner or later, everyone who loves movies comes to Ozu. He is the quietest and gentlest of directors, the most humanistic, the most serene.” — Roger Ebert

    It took long enough, but I sampled my first Yasujiro Ozu film, Good Morning (Ohayo), and will soon indulge myself with as many of his works as I can locate. At one time, his films were thought to be “too Japanese” and weren’t available in the West, but if Good Morning is any indication of his craft and appeal, Ozu deserves a much wider audience. It’s a film that works at multiple levels, and only artistic geniuses like Shakespeare have been able to pull off such a universal work that works with both down to earth people and with the upper levels of critical audiences equally.Read More »

  • Bernardo Bertolucci – Ultimo tango a Parigi AKA Last Tango in Paris (1972)

    Bernardo Bertolucci1971-1980Amos Vogel: Film as a Subversive ArtDramaFrance
    Ultimo tango a Parigi (1972)
    Ultimo tango a Parigi (1972)

    Quote:
    In Bernardo Bertolucci’s art-house classic, Marlon Brando delivers one of his characteristically idiosyncratic performances as Paul, a middle-aged American in “emotional exile” who comes to Paris when his estranged wife commits suicide. Chancing to meet young Frenchwoman Jeanne (Maria Schneider), Paul enters into a sadomasochistic, carnal relationship with her, indirectly attacking the hypocrisy all around him through his raw, outrageous sexual behavior. Paul also hopes to purge himself of his own feelings of guilt, brilliantly (and profanely) articulated in a largely ad-libbed monologue at his wife’s coffin. If the sexual content in Last Tango is uncomfortably explicit (once seen, the infamous “butter scene” is never forgotten), the combination of Brando’s acting, Bertolucci’s direction, Vittorio Storaro’s cinematography, and Gato Barbieri’s music is unbeatable, creating one of the classic European art movies of the 1970s, albeit one that is not for all viewers.Read More »

  • Al Kouzel – Fotodeath (1961)

    1961-1970Al KouzelAmos Vogel: Film as a Subversive ArtExperimentalShort FilmUSA

    From Amos Vogel’s Film as a Subversive Art:
    A film record of one of Claes Oldenburg’s celebrated happenings – largely improvised, mysterious or humorous, neo-Dadaist or surreal events, not necessarily causal or meaningful, which sardonically comment on an absurd universe and aim at fusing actor and spectator, art and life.Read More »

  • Vera Chytilová – Sedmikrásky AKA Daisies (1966)

    1961-1970Amos Vogel: Film as a Subversive ArtArthouseCzech RepublicExperimentalVera Chytilová

    Synopsis:
    If the entire world is bad, why shouldn’t we be? Adopting this insolent attitude as their guiding philosophy, a pair of hedonistic young women (Ivana Karbanová and Jitka Cerhová), both named Marie, embark on a gleefully debauched odyssey of gluttony, giddy destruction, and antipatriarchal resistance, in which nothing is safe from their nihilistic pursuit of pleasure. But what happens when the fun is over? Matching her anarchic message with an equally radical aesthetic, director Věra Chytilová, with the close collaboration of cinematographer Jaroslav Kučera, unleashes an optical storm of fluctuating film stocks, kaleidoscopic montages, cartoonish stop-motion cutouts, and surreal costumes designed by Ester Krumbachová, who also cowrote the script. The result is Daisies, the most defiant provocation of the Czechoslovak New Wave, an exuberant call to rebellion aimed squarely at those who uphold authoritarian oppression in any form.Read More »

  • Jean Renoir – La règle du jeu aka The Rules of the Game (1939)

    1931-1940Amos Vogel: Film as a Subversive ArtDramaFranceJean Renoir

    Alain Resnais° wrote:
    It remains, I think, the single overwhelming experience I’ve ever had in a cinema. When I first came out of the theater, I remember I just had to sit on the edge of the pavement. I sat there for about five minutes and then I walked the streets of Paris for a couple of hours. For me, every thing had been turned upside down. All my ideas about the cinema had been changed. While I was actually watching the film, my impressions were so strong physically that I thought that if this or that sequence would to go for one more shot, I would either burst into tears or scream or something. Since then, of course, I’ve seen it at least fifteen times like most filmmakers of my generation. I even recorded the whole soundtrack on my tape recorder and it’s amazing how well it stands up well on its own.Read More »

  • Alex de Renzy – History of a Blue Movie (1970)

    1961-1970Alex de RenzyAmos Vogel: Film as a Subversive ArtDocumentaryEroticaUSA

    From the New York Times
    “This humorous and informative documentary traces the history of cinematic pornography back to the 1915 stag film “The Free Ride.” Sexual attitudes of society have been carefully researched and explained as films from World War up to and including the year 1970 are examined. Stripper Candy Barr is shown in the classic “Smart Alec”, and the mild peep shows of the 1940s and 1950s are examined. All events lead up to the late 1960s where censorship laws were successfully challenged in the courts. The last half hour is a shameless promotion of director Alex de Renzy’s current blue movies and adds nothing to the historical perspective of the feature. Color process is not credited, but few porn films before the 1960s were filmed in color. ~ Dan Pavlides”Read More »

  • Jerzy Skolimowski – Rysopis AKA Identification Marks: None (1965)

    1961-1970Amos Vogel: Film as a Subversive ArtArthouseDramaJerzy SkolimowskiPoland

    A day in the life of student Andrzej who, between the morning and late afternoon, gives up on his studies, breaks up with his partner, and decides to join the army. Before his departure, Andrzej tries to straighten out his life, and encounters Barbara, who he sees as the woman he always waited for.Read More »

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