The Top 10 of the Criterion Summer
Well, what a summer it has been! With yesterday’s viewing and analysis of “The Lady Eve” I have completed my 100 Criterion films in 100 days “Criterion Summer” and I must admit it’s been quite the experience. Never in my life have I watched so many films in such a sort span of time and gained such a diverse wealth of knowledge on the art and industry of cinema, both in America and in the world as a whole, and I would like to thank the people of at “The Criterion Collection” for providing the public with such provoking and important films. The whole experience has certainly been a blessing and after spending, on average, four hours a day watching, researching, and writing out thoughts on a film, I now find it strange to sit back and not watch a film for a change.
So what will I being doing with all this extra free time? Well, there are several things in the works! For instance, I’ll be writing a new screenplay, touching up a stageplay and television spec script, teaching another semester of film classes at Huntington University, and continually writing on this website about cinema and its hot button issues.
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Anyway, after watching 100 Criterion films in 100 days, it can be hard to pick just ten as my favorite, but, with a whole lot of consideration, I’ve come up with a small list of these very films. To learn more about each, simply click on their posters.
To see my thoughts on any of the 100 films watched check out “The Criterion Summer’s” page.
Note: These are in order by their Criterion spine number and not my personal favoritism. Enjoy!
1. Hard Boiled 2. The Long Good Friday 3. The Red Shoes (1948)
4. Brazil 5. Yojimbo 6. Charade
7. Autumn Sonata 8. The Third Man 9. Rushmore
10. Do the Right Thing
Day 100: The Lady Eve (1941)
Well, it’s finally here. After 100 days of watching Criterion films, we’ve finally reached the end of this epic journey of cinematic discovery and what a finale! “The Lady Eve” by writer and director Preston Sturges is a hilarious and wild ride that speaks on gender roles and the art of the con, but, above everything else, is just plain old fun.
In the film, Barbara Stanwyck plays Jean Harrington, a card sharp and con artist, who works with her father “Colonel” Harrington (Charles Coburn) and his partner in crime Gerald (Melville Cooper) to hustle money from unsuspecting wealthy young men, who can’t keep their eyes off of her. A master of seduction, Jean has now set her sights on the rich, wide-eyed bookworm Charles Pike (Henry Fonda), heir to the Pike Ale company, who is returning from a year-long expedition in the Amazon by cruise ship.
All aboard and ready to milk Charlie for what he’s got, Jean puts the moves on him by making her something he can’t have and, before you know it, he’s head over heels about her and ready for the taking. But, just when all seems to be coming up aces, Jean finds she’s been dealt a different hand, as she’s fallen for Charlie as much as he’s fallen for her. Pressed with the knowledge that he plans to ask for her hand in marriage, Jean will have to find a way to reveal her true identity while stopping her father from taking Charlie for all he’s got.
What can easily be said about Preston Sturges’s “The Lady Eve” is that it’s undeniably fun. While so many comedies these days are too lazy to go for the more dry or complex punchline, this film soars because of its quick wit and hilarious slapstick performances, which makes up for its plot being rather thin in spots and a bit unrealistic in its choices. We can get over these things because the film sets up its own world so nicely, giving us a place where, at times, its the woman who pursues the man, creating hilarity through mixing up the normal gender roles.
Certainly influenced a bit by Gary Cooper in “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town,” Henry Fonda’s “awe shucks” Charlie is definitely one of his greatest and most understated performances, as he puts his “manly hero” persona on the back burner and allows Stanwyck to play the predator, which, even today, in the wake of the whole independent woman revolution of the 1960′s and 70′s, still feels rather modern. Even by the end, when Charlie surprises Jean by taking her in his arms and kisses her in that classic if not cliche way, it is all because of how Jean has set things up to eventually fall in her favor, still making her the one in charge.
Ahead of its time, “The Lady Eve” certainly put is mark on the topic of gender relations in film and would heavily influence works such as the Barbara Streisand comedy “What’s Up Doc?” and others in the years to come.
To learn more about “The Lady Eve,” check out Criterion’s page here.
Now at the end of “The Criterion Summer,” there is still more movie fun to come! Stay updated on all of Nathan’s posts about the art and industry of cinema through his Facebook page here.
Day 99: The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972)
A satire through and through, “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” is an odd sort of tale by Spanish director Luis Bunuel, which explores the lives of six rich capitalist friends and their interactions with one another and the rest of society. Though charming, engaging, and, at many times, quite humorous, the film thrives with its almost non-liner story telling and absurdist plotting that takes us in and out of dream sequences with very little clarity and gives us a surreal experience that never truly lets us grow bored or restless.
In the film, Frankeur and Seyrig Thévenot, Rafael Acosta (Fernando Rey) and the Thévenot’s sister Florence (Bulle Ogier), go to the house of their friends Alice and Henri Sénéchal for an evening dinner party, but have their plans abruptly changed when there is no dinner to be had. It seems a misunderstanding about the date of the party has caused the group to arrive a day early and so, never to be caught without a plan B, they head over to a nearby inn to eat. But, though the inn is open and eager to serve them, this clan of capitalists decide the choices on the menu alone are not good enough and, on top of the fact that the inn is also housing a wake for their recently deceased owner in the next room, the group once again leaves without eating.
As the film progresses, the reality and linear nature of the story grows less and less as this rich group of the bourgeoisie deal with issues spanning from Rafael, who is an ambassador for the fictional country of Miranda, fighting off terrorists to the men of the group dealing in cocaine and the woman finding a tea room that has no tea to speak of. But the innermost desires and fears of these rich elite finally come into focus when their dreams reveal what they truly think behind their masks of class and how “the easy life” isn’t always as easy as it seems.
With “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” director Luis Bunuel really plays with his audience, mixing the normal with the absurd and adding dreams to give it all a surreal tone that is easy to watch but hard to digest and understand. Though the story itself is disjointed and unrealistic, Bunuel succeeds in presenting the upper class as living unaffected, disinterested, and unaware of what goes on around them or how their actions impact others. They are more concerned with tradition, etiquette, and rules, but would hardly waste the energy necessary to get angry over other people’s ignorance to their way of life. Instead they give pity to a world that’s just not ready to be like them.
But, while they spend their days with their heads in the clouds, Bunuel uses their dreams and the very fact that, though they try several times to have dinner together, no one ever gets to eat to make a point about how the rich, even with all they have, can never be fulfilled. In many way, what they are is a show and Bunuel once again recognizes this with a dream in which all sit down for dinner but have a curtain open behind them to reveal an audience, watching them like a play. Though many of the group run offstage, Henri is paralyzed in his spot and mutters to himself, “I’ve forgotten my lines.” A capitalist’s worst nightmare.
“The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” is a weird and wonderful satire about the upperclass that brings a new absurd light to their livelihood. Now, in a day and age where oil companies run countries and everyone tries to make a buck, this film may be more important now than ever before.
To learn more about “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie,” check out Criterion’s page here.
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Day 98: Cries and Whispers (1972)
Returning to the “Criterion Summer,” Swedish master filmmaker Ingmar Bergman delivers ”Cries and Whispers,” a film that looks upon death, suffering, and how all those involved react to the mortality in themselves and those they love. A deeply moving film, it is as disturbing and raw as it is quiet and beautiful and this fusion of contrasts are used with amazing visual technique to better lay down its message of man’s confrontation with death and the slow, sometimes painful, process it brings forth.
In “Cries and Whispers,” sisters Maria (Liv Ullmann) and Karin (Ingrid Thulin) are brought together at the family mansion to watch over the deathbed of their other sister Agnes (Harriet Andersson), who is riddled with excruciating cancer. Though both Maria and Karin feel it appropriate to be at the side of their dying sister, both feel distant and awkward with each other and with this personification of death that they once treated as family.
Completely self-absorbed, Maria spends her days thinking about her promiscuous lifestyle and how it eventually cost her the marriage she once had. Karin, as well, is too preoccupied to really take care of Agnes and spends her time struggling with her desire for sexual gratification and self harm. In fact, the only person who truly aids Agnes in her passage towards death is Anna (Kari Sylwan), a deeply religious maid, who lost her own daughter many years ago but has come to terms with the concept of death. Through her we are able to witness comfort and grace amongst Maria and Karin’s jealousy, manipulation, and selfishness, but it is Agnes herself who will help them all, in the end, better understand what we all must eventually come to grips with- our own demise.
A film of deep meaning and conviction, “Cries and Whispers” is a perfect example of how cinema can visually tell a story like no other. While, for much of his career, director Ingmar Bergman concentrated and preferred black and white for his films, “Cries and Whispers” is not his first in color but possibly his greatest. Fully using the capabilities of a color palette and mixing it with the cinematography of Sven Nykvist, he uses the blacks and whites found in the sister’s mansion and puts them up against a deep and defining red, which, when it shows up, draws the eye and elicits emotion immediately.
It is this red that not only marks many significant scenes in the film but also what Bergman think upon matters of the soul. In his book “Images,” he says, “All my films can be thought of in terms of black and white, except for “Cries and Whispers.” In the screenplay, it says that red represents for me the interior of the soul. When I was a child, I imagined the soul to be a dragon, a shadow floating in the air like blue smoke—a huge winged creature, half bird, half fish. But inside the dragon, everything was red.” With this in mind, Bergman purposefully uses this color in matters of the soul. Whether that be in the crimson walls and floors of the mansion that seems to entomb Agnes and trap her sisters or the blood the Karin spills from her own body to gain sexual satisfaction and punishment for her guilt, Bergman makes each use or absence of color count.
Gaining cinematographer Sven Nykvist an Academy Award for his work, “Cries and Whispers” is now a stable of art-house cinema and a beautifully filmed story about the process of death and our process of accepting its eventual outcome.
To learn more about “Cries and Whispers,” check out Criterion’s page here.
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Day 97: Gimme Shelter (1970)
Sometimes, in the rarest of occasions, filmmakers are just at the right place at the right time. For documentary masters the Maysles brothers and Charlotte Zwerin, the place would be the “Altamont Speedway Free Festival” and the time would be 1969- the beginning of the end for the hippie counter culture.
The last year of the 1960′s had been of one of both highs and lows for the world at large. The Beatles had played their last concert atop the Apple records studio on a cold January morning, Buzz Aldrin took “one giant leap for mankind” on the moon in July, Woodstock promoted peace and music in August and, by December, the first United States lottery draft was enacted since World War Two for Vietnam. The world was spinning fast and “The Rolling Stones,” one of, if not the most, popular band of the time, felt like spinning it faster.
As David Maysles, Albert Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin filmed the Stones’ infamous U.S. tour, the band came up with the idea of organizing and headlining a free concert in California that they hoped would gone on to be considered something along the lines of a west coast Woodstock. From its inception, the idea was marred by difficulty, including both the San Jose State practice field and San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park turning down the opportunity to host the event for both scheduling and legal reasons. Finally finding a home at Altamont Raceway two days before the concert was to occur, people from all over the country flooded the area to such an extreme that security, provided by the ”Hell’s Angels,” who were told all they had to do was keep people from the stage and drink beer, found themselves utterly outnumbered.
300,000 strong, the youth culture, who had all turned on, tuned in, and dropped out to a point far past self-destruction, created immediate chaos for the festival and were getting high on every drug imaginable while growing increasingly hostile and violent by the second. Literally standing on the stage, the crow was uncontrollable and their thirst for the Rolling Stones could not seem to be quenched by the likes of Jefferson Airplane, who went on to play but were constantly interupted by fights going on amongst the crowd. It got so bad that one of the band’s members was hit in the face, not by a fan, but by a Hell’s Angel’s security guard, causing a yelling match between the band and the biker in front of everyone.
Finally, after making the crazed masses wait for hours on end, the Rolling Stones came to the stage and the violence and pandemonium grew worse than ever, culminating in Meredith Hunter, an eighteen year-old African American, pulling a gun on a Hell’s Angel and being stabbed and kicked to death by the group’s members. It is this incident that makes up most of ”Gimmie Shelter,” as both the Stones and the filmmakers try to figure out how and why the entire festival, and a whole generation for that matter, went so sour so fast.
To best do this, the Maysles and Zwerin look at the festival and it’s tragic events like a post-mortem, picking it apart to best find the cause of its demise. From start to finish, the film occasionally cuts to an editing room as the Rolling Stones, primarily Mick Jagger, grimly watch footage of the festival and then, of course, the murder, which they rewind and watch multiple times as if trying to come to grips with the part they played in the fiasco.
Though tension is easily brought to the film simply by the actions of all at the festival, the filmmakers find a way to give it an edge by cutting back and forth between the festival’s music and the ever pressing of the crowds. As the music crescendos so does the tension and we watch a strange mix of hostility and drugged up hysteria come together and explode. Even if we didn’t know of the famous Altamont murder, we know very quickly that the film won’t resolve peacfully or quietly. There is just too much rage for the this wave of sex, drugs, and rock and roll not to crest and fall.
Though “Gimme Shelter” is one of the greatest music documentaries ever made, it rises far above that and has become pure evidence of a time long past, a people quickly stereotyped, and a movement that nailed its own coffin at Altamont.
To learn more about “Gimme Shelter,” check out Criterion’s page here.
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Day 96: L’avventura (1960)
“L’avventura,” directed by Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni, is a tale about choices, both the ones we decide to make and the ones we decide to ignore. With its lush settings and beautiful stars, a film like this could be mistaken for simple melodrama at the beginning, but quickly it careens off the beaten path, taking us to a place where the events that occur have us crying out for answers the film has no plans to answer.
In “L’avventura,” Anna (Lea Massari) and Claudia (Monica Vitti) are two best friends who meet up with Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti), Anna’s lover, for a yacht trip to “Lisca Bianca,” a volcanic island off the coast of Sicily. While the trip seems to be going well, Anna soon grows bored of Sandro and, after Claudia and Sandro fall asleep sunbathing, she disappears all together. Though at first the two are simply annoyed with Anna’s actions, as time goes on, they grow worried and, eventually, call Anna’s diplomat father to come to the island with a search party.
Arriving with a police ship and helicopter, Anna’s father begins conducting a search and rescue operation but, no matter how long they look, no trace of Anna can be found. Fearing her dead, Claudia and Sandro return to their lives, holding out hope that one day Anna will return, but, as the days turn into weeks, the two find themselves holding a certain new attraction towards one another, forcing each to decide if their feelings can outweight the guilt of Anna’s disappearance.
Upon it’s release at Cannes, “L’avventura” was cat called and booed by its audience in such a harsh manner that director Antonioni and Monica Vitti fled the theater. Though the film would later become a classic with both critics and viewers upon its actual release, the question remains why the film could bring out so much unbridled anger in that first viewing audience. The best guess seems to stem from a certain part of the film’s ending, which can be given away without truly harming the watching experience. By the end, Anna has not only never been found, but the entire film shifts its focus away from the mystery and transforms itself into Claudia and Sandro’s love story.
With this abrupt change in the story, many consider the actions of the characters to feel disjointed or untrue to what would actually occur. To explain this, Antonioni said, in his reaction to the Cannes incident, “The tragedy in “L’avventura” stems directly from an erotic impulse of this type: unhappy, miserable, futile. To be critically aware of the vulgarity and the futility of such an overwhelming erotic impulse, as is the case with the protagonist in “L’avventura”, is not enough or serves no purpose. And here we witness the crumbling of a myth, which proclaims it is enough for us to know, to be critically conscious of ourselves, to analyze ourselves, in all our complexities and in every facet of our personality. The fact that matters is that such an examination is not enough. It is only a preliminary step. Every day, every emotional encounter gives rise to a new adventure.”
By using the true and honest impulsive nature of humans and not simply following normal story protocol, Antonioni’s “L’avventura” is a one of a kind example of how patterns form in the ways we take in film and, when that pattern is broken we lash out against it. It is because of its willingness to break the mold that makes it still as fresh a film as when it was unceremoniously booed those many years ago.
To learn more about “L’avventura,” check out Criterion’s page here.
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Day 95: Do the Right Thing (1989)
Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing” really knows how to bring the heat, both figuratively and literally. As hilarious as it is intense, Lee’s vision of urban life blasted onto the screen in 1989 and created a watershed of discussion between all parties concerning racial tensions in America. While films like “In the Heat of the Night” and even “To Kill a Mockingbird” had looked at race before on the big screen, “Do the Right Thing” took it a step further, drawing less on simple bigotry and more on the anger that comes from several races and their cultures colliding day in and day out in the close quarters of their Brooklyn neighborhood.
In “Do the Right Thing,” director Spike Lee also plays our main protagonist, Mookie, a young man living in a black Brooklyn neighborhood with his sister Jade, who wants nothing more than for him to move out. To make ends meet and take care of his girlfriend and child, Mookie delivers pizzas for Salvatore “Sal” Frangione (Danny Aiello) and his local pizza joint, but spends most of his days shirking his work and chatting with Sal’s two sons, Pino (John Turturro) and Vito (Richard Edson).
On one particular day, as the city’s temperature reaches record highs, the entire neighborhood is sweating it outside and tensions between everyone begin to rise. A drunk called Da Mayor (Ossie Davis) is constantly bothering Mother Sister (Ruby Dee), though he wants nothing but her affection. A large man called Radio Raheem blasts his boombox wherever he goes, getting on the Latino gangs nerves as they try to play their own music. Smiley, a mentally disabled man, bothers everyone while trying to sell hand-colored pictures of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. Without a doubt, the town is simmering under the heat and when the black Radio’s stereo is smashed by the white Italian Sal, anger grows to a fever pitch and Mookie finds himself in the middle of it- stuck between his race and his boss.
From “Do the Right Thing’s” very beginning, tension is brought to the table. As the opening credits roll, Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” plays and its understood quite clearly that this will not be a tale of minorities standing up for themselves in the face of oppression, but bringing the fight to the oppressors. All throughout the film, music acts as a key player in both explaining and mediating the racial climate that is rising. To do this, Lee gives the neighborhood its own radio station and DJ, Love Daddy (Samuel L. Jackson), who sets the different tones of the film with his music, almost as if marking chapters in the film’s story. In a way, this role could be compared to Wolfman Jack in “America Graffiti,” as both men seem to oversee the action in the film as more of a narrator than anything else and comment accordingly with the songs they play.
With Jackson’s Love Daddy, he certainly stands as the film’s voice of reason. While everyone else loses their temper in the heat, Love Daddy stays inside his air conditioned studio and reminds everyone to “chill,” which can be taken in many ways as the anger in the film grows. In fact, in one of the film’s most popular scenes, Mookie, Pino, and several others look directly in the camera and shout out racist words of hate about one another, only to be stopped by Love Daddy who raises his hands in his studio, stares directly into the camera and says, “Yo! Hold up! Time out! TIME OUT! Y’all take a chill! Ya need to cool that shit out! And that’s the double truth, Ruth!” Though Lee leaves his film’s view on race relations vague, ending it with quotes from both Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, it maybe Love Daddy who is stating the story’s true point of view. Maybe we won’t ever get along completely, but we won’t at all if we just don’t “take a chill.”
To learn more about, “Do the Right Thing,” check out Criterion’s page here.
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Day 94: Written on the Wind (1956)
Douglas Sirk’s “Written on the Wind” is melodrama at it’s finest. It’s rich drunk oil tycoons, sex crazed blondes, even a gun shot ringing out in the dark and all done without a hair getting out of place for any of the characters. While soap operas had been showing the tragic lives of the rich and famous since the days of radio, Sirk’s film brought this drama into a more fully realized world and got away with things no television, or film of that time, would think possible.
In “Written on the Wind,” Kyle Hadley (Robert Stack) is the rich playboy son of an oil tycoon, who has been best friends with the middle class Mitch Wayne (Rock Hudson) since they were children. Now adults, Mitch works for Kyle’s father while Kyle simply drinks his days away at a local bar and woos pretty girls with his quick car and quicker spending. But, one day, Mitch and Kyle meet Lucy Moore (Lauren Bacall) and, while Mitch has more honest intentions, it is Kyle who sweeps her off her feet and, eventually, down the wedding aisle.
Never one to double cross a friend, Mitch holds in his desire for Lucy and watches as her and Kyle grow deeper in their marriage and try to conceive a child. As Lucy slips away, Kyle’s sister Marylee (Dorothy Malone), a nymphomaniac firecracker, has her sights directly on Mitch, but he’s having none of it and makes it known when he decides to leave the Hadley oil company to travel overseas- finally sick of the cards life’s dealt him. But before Mitch ever gets a chance to pack his bags, Kyle’s drinking grows worse than ever and Lucy, needing a kind soul to comfort her, turns to Mitch. Now more mixed up in the Hadley’s business than ever, Mitch will have to find a way to right Kyle’s wrongs, even if that means telling Lucy how he feels and ruining the best friendship he’s ever had.
As mentioned before, “Written on the Wind” is a melodramatic masterpiece. With Sirk’s classic use of heightened color and soft edges, he creates a world that is certainly artificial but, through its play-like acting and setting, we gain a heightened realism to the emotions we feel. With subtlety lost in the melodrama, we are allowed to watch our inner most feelings fly on the screen in ways we’d never allow ourselves in real life and, because of this, the film is, at times, almost cathartic.
But this level of honesty doesn’t come without at least acting true to what the characters act and say. In a time where a toilet hadn’t even been seen on the silver screen or television, “Written on the Wind” discusses everything from promiscuous sex, affairs, and even miscarriages, not to mention the randy way Marylee sometimes looks at Mitch, which so steams up the screen you have to wonder if whats on her dirty little mind is even legal today. The general level of frankness the film shows for its time, of course, comes from Hollywood’s own need to beat out the television set, which was beginning to take the edge off the number of theater goers in their seats. Though they were already beating the TV with the use of color, many executives realized that certain adult themes could be allowed in film that would never pass the TV censors and and this could once again bring people back to the big screen for more mature programing. Pressuring the Hays Code on film censorship, Hollywood gained the upper hand and suddenly realized to the fullest that sex really could sell.
With “Written on the Wind” and other films of that time, Hollywood realized that controversy meant dollar signs and so filmmakers, many for the first time, were allowed to create the most honest pictures of their career, giving audience a whole new level of experience in the art of cinema.
To learn more about “Written on the Wind,” check out Criterion’s page here.
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Day 93: All That Heaven Allows (1955)
“All That Heaven Allows,” directed by Douglas Sirk is a gorgeous romantic melodrama centered on the love found between two social classes and the power of 1950′s conformity that holds them apart. Wrapped in the glow of beautiful Technicolor, Sirk’s film explores the growth a person finds in the absence of loss and how, with just the right care, they can be brought back better than ever before.
In “All That Heaven Allows,” Jane Wyman plays Cary Scott, a widow in a New England suburb, who fills the loneliness of her newly single life with her two college aged kids and several friends from her country club. Though she has been seeing a caring, yet somewhat older, man named Harvey for some time, she has no real romantic connection with him and simply finds his kind presence better than being alone.
But, one day, she falls for Ron Kirby (Rock Hudson), a younger more down to earth man, who’s content with his life outside the society circles. Soon, the two fall in love and become engaged, hoping to fix up an old abandoned mill on Ron’s country property and live in it. Quickly the news of Cary and Ron spreads into the community and Cary grows deeply concerned when her friends and children look down upon Ron because of both his age and his place in society- stating that they find it appalling for a woman to date, let alone marry, their own gardener. Finding no way to please anyone and fearing her children will abandon her, Cary finally breaks off the engagement and goes back to her life as a widow. But her passion for Ron and his quieter more honest way of living still calls to her and it will be up to Cary if she’ll finally leave her judgmental town behind and follow her heart.
With “All That Heaven Allows,” Sirk uses the beautiful New England landscape as a backdrop for a discussion on the concept of nurturing and how it takes place in people’s lives. Early on in the film it’s obvious that Cary’s town is nurturing her back from the grief found from the loss of her husband and her courter Harvey is the personification of this certain ideal as he never asks or challenges Cary with much of anything, allowing her all the space she needs. At one point, when discussing his idea of romance Harvey explains, “I’m sure you know like I do, affection and companionship are the important things.” Cary doesn’t seem so sure.
Enter Ron, a man different in almost every way from the other people Cary knows and one who has a different outlook to what nurturing something actually means. I don’t believe its a coincidence that this positive nurturer in our protagonist’s life is also a gardener for his profession. It’s symbolic and soon into their courtship, Ron shows Cary that nurturing someone is not a hands off process but hands on, both physically and emotionally. He holds her close, kisses her gently, and whispers words of encouragement when the future begins to look hard. Though Cary is certainly more than a plant, it is a wonderful analogy that is brilliantly pulled off in the film.
“All That Heaven Allows” is a gorgeous film to look at and one that contains a rather complex social study for what could have just been a simple romance film. In 2010, it was declared to have one of the greatest film romances of all time by “The Guardian” newspaper, proving that some big screen love stories will forever remain timeless.
To learn more about ”All That Heaven Allows,” check out Criterion’s page here.
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Day 92: I Know Where I’m Going (1945)
The creative team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger return for a third film in “The Criterion Summer” and this time with something unlike their previously reviewed dramas, “The Red Shoes” and “Black Narcissus.” A lighthearted love story, “I Know Where I’m Going!” is a tale of both modern time attitudes and ancient myth, of a fast paced life in a slow moving country.
In the film, “Pygmalion’s” Wendy Hiller plays Joan Webster, a stubborn go-getter whose unshakable determination has gotten her everything things she’s always wanted through the sheer strength of her own iron-like will and, when she finally lays her sights on marrying Sir Robert Bellinger, a very wealthy and much older Scotsman, who lives on the Isle of Kiloran, there won’t be anything to stop her from hearing those wedding bells chime.
But, just as this unstoppable woman barrels towards her ultimate goal, fate steps in and brings her to a screeching halt. When bad weather holds off her boat ride to Kiloran, Joan is forced to wait it out on the Isle of Mull, among its laid back community and Torquil MacNeil (Roger Livesey), a naval man who is also trying to make it to Kiloran for his shore leave.
With nothing better to do, Joan and Torquil strike up a friendship and soon Joan finds out that her new traveling companion is actually the the Laird of Kiloran and owns the island while Sir Robert simply leases it from him. As the storms continues and Joan misses the day of her wedding, she’s finally slowed down enough to find herself conflicted between the life she thought she desired with Sir Robert and the unknown possibility of being with Torquil. If a decision is to be made, it will need to be made quickly before the storm lets up and the boat comes for Joan and her future.
“I Know Where I’m Going” is certainly the most lighthearted of the Powell and Pressburger films we’ve watched over “The Criterion Summer” and the earliest of their work, but much of what’s found in this film can be seen as an influence on their later work, including both “The Red Shoes” and “Black Narcissus.” With this film, the concept of culture clash, which later is the whole crux of “Black Narcissus,” shows up here as Joan finds herself amongst the Scottish people on the Isle of Mull. Though they all speak English, it is if they don’t speak the same language at all. There are customs, traditions, and town dynamics that Joan is completely unaware of, especially with the position that Torquil holds in the community as Laird. Also, Joan’s entire “go-get’em” demeanor isn’t something that this laid back part of the world understands. Though its hardly the same sort of extreme cultural tension found in “Black Narcissus” “I Know Where I’m Going” uses what it does have for humor more than anything else.
Also, much like “The Red Shoes,” which Powell and Pressburger would make three years later, “I Know Where I’m Going” has an aspect of myth and magic to it, stemming from Scottish heritage. In one scene, Joan wants to see the inside of Moy Castle, but Torquil won’t accompany her, stating that, centuries ago, an ancestor of his had stormed the castle, capturing his wife with a lover. In a state of fury, he threw them into a water filled dungeon and his wife placed a curse on all the Lairds of Kiloran, stating that any who dared to step into the Castle would be chained to a woman to the end of his days. Of course, this grave story, much like the cultural tension, is later used in the film to further the its lighthearted tone instead of bringing it down to a drama.
“I Know Where I’m Going” is a fun and beautiful film that captures the glow of the Scottish landscape even if filmed in black and white and its tale of a young determined woman meeting a more laid back man is an early account of a staple in today’s romantic comedy genre.
To learn more about “I Know Where I’m Going,” check out Criterion’s page here.
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