Retrospecticus: The Rolling Stones

I believe it was Sir Michael Phillip Jagger who once said, “When I turn 33, I’ll retire. That’s the time when a man has to dedicate himself to other things. I don’t want to be a rock star all my life.” Well, Jagger turned 33 fifty years ago, and the Rolling Stones released their 25th UK studio album (depending on how you count it) last Friday.

Formed 64 years ago, the band who debuted as “The Rollin’ Stones” at the Marquee Club for a crowd of just over a hundred has gone on to sell over 250 million records, win four Grammy Awards (plus a Lifetime Achievement Award), and, in 2006, play to an estimated 1.5 million people at Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro.

Even today, the Stones roll on.

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Criterion Month Day 10: Juliet of the Spirits

Juliet of the Spirits (1965)

In terms of discovering classic foreign films as a budding teenage cinephile, Fellini was certainly one of my gateway directors. That said, I gobbled up a bunch of his movies in high school and early college and probably have not watched one of his films since we were still renting DVDs in the mail from Netflix. So since Criterion Month always presents plenty of opportunities for a dip into Fellini-land, I’ve always been curious to see how I feel about the director now, since he’s certainly not namechecked by filmmakers nearly as much as he was 20 or 30 years ago. However, in watching 1965’s Juliet of the Spirits, it’s easy to see how Fellini’s influence on cinema is still quite present, while a latter film like this still has the ability to challenge and disorient.

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Criterion Month Day 9: Viridiana

Viridiana (1961)

I’ve written a few times about Spanish surrealist Luis Buñuel and his distaste for the bourgeoisie. What I haven’t delved into is the equal disdain Buñuel had for the Catholic Church. Born and raised in a strict Catholic environment, Buñuel lost his faith at age 16 after reading Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species. Influenced by Darwin’s ideas and what he saw as the hypocrisy and corruption of the Church, Buñuel became an atheist. Though he still carried a fascination with the icons and rituals of the faith, and how to subvert them. I mean, this is a guy who, at one point in this film, depicts a crucifix that’s revealed to be a flick knife. If that isn’t the perfect representation of religious hypocrisy, I don’t know what is.

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Criterion Month Day 8: Breathless

Breathless (1960)

When we talked, I talked about me, you talked about you, when we should have talked about each other.

Has there ever been a more damning indictment of romantic French cinema than Michel’s line here in Breathless? When I think about pretentious French movies, it’s exactly that: a man and a woman in black and white, both monologuing into the void about whatever the fuck instead of having anything that could possibly resemble human connection. So I guess it took a film critic making his first movie to put that shit on blast. It’s stuff like that that makes Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless still an exciting movie to watch 66 years after its release.

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Criterion Month Day 7: Ashes And Diamonds

Ashes and Diamonds (1958)

For my first foray into the career of Polish director Andrzej Wajda, I’m starting at the end. Not at the end of his career, as he would be a presence on the international film stage even into the ’80s, but more because I’m starting at the end of a trilogy. Wajda’s films A Generation in 1955 and Kanał in 1957 preceded Ashes and Diamonds as commentaries on the effects World War II had on Poland, and all three have appeared together in an early Criterion box set that is now out of print. But Ashes and Diamonds seems to be the most acclaimed of these three films, so it seemed like a good place to start. The film certainly feels like a continuation of something, as there’s an impeccable amount of craft behind it, which managed to slip in some anti-communist sympathies despite being filmed in communist Poland. Continue reading →

Criterion Month Day 6: Cairo Station

Cairo Station (1958)

One fun thing to be reminded of each year when we do Criterion Month is that film is such a rich, wide-ranging, and diverse medium that there are always new pockets of great filmmaking around the world to discover. Namely, I chose to watch Cairo Station for not much reason other than that it was a film produced in Egypt, a country that I don’t believe has been represented yet in Criterion Month. So after watching the film and doing a little bit of digging into its production, I was surprised to find that Egypt actually had a pretty thriving film industry during the mid-20th century, on par with Bollywood.

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