Leave it to your choosing whether this topic or the more specific director or film topic suits you. Because I now live in LA I have access to a handful of great revival theaters and a lot of times when I see one of these there doesn't feel like a place to discuss it. So, I will here, and I hope it appeals to more people and they do too.
Three great ones in a short period. The first was Madame de..., Max Ophüls 1953. At the Aero as part of Kevin Thomas favorite film series. It's a great period picture and one that doesn't betray the story by emphasizing the environment. What it does is unfold a romance story it makes emblematic of social constrictions normal for the period, this strengthens the desires and passions of its leads because of how easy it is to emphasize with characters wanting resolution and explosive emotional content when as an audience member we're asking for the same. We want them to let go, fix their problems, resolve their storyline, but we can't make them and they aren't doing it. Its ability to communicate the inhibitions of the leads without forcing the leads to uncoil feels very genuine and more believable than what you see in an Amadeus from the present.
Mary, Abel Ferrara 2005 the next day again at the Aero. I love Ferrara because Bad Lieutenant is brave and moving and because The Funeral is an intelligent and powerful crime film. But I feel about him kind of like pete feels about Guillermo Arriaga, I think he said it in the Three Burials thread, how it seems like Arriaga doesn't know the difference between contrivance and serendipity. Besides the two listed all of his films are pretty inconsistent. Mary fits along with this. It has two or three really jarring scenes, interesting character dynamics, and intelligent conversation about at least one of its major themes (the suppression and misrepresentation of female figures in the Bible). But it also reaches into places without exploring, which might be called provocative since provocative seems sometimes to mean inconclusive and unilluminating. All scenes involving the infilm director are included in this description - in fact his entire story line. And Whitaker's ending. Their purpose seems to suggest the complexity and confusion implicit in Biblical study but Ferrara so oversaturates these scenes with strong images and emotional intensity that it feels like he's other trying to say more and not accomplishing it or not sure about what he wants to say. So the powerful of Ferrara's filmmaking overcomes his power as a storyteller. Other times his filmmaking is weak, like in all the Whitaker television scenes.
Second Breath, Jean-Pierre Melville 1966. Last night at the Egyptian. Italian neorealism is for me what the French New Wave is for others, and so what continues to fascinate me the most is that semi-realistic but poetic and filmic French period just pre-andinto-New Wave, like Melville, Becker, and Bresson. Those actually are still my favorite kind of movies, and I'm lucky that the whole world makes them now (and it literally just now occurred to me that that's obviously noir's appeal for me). But anyway Second Breath was everything like that. This is my favorite kind of fantasy world to enter into, where everyone seems concerned with spiritual value but are moved forward by the machinery of society. Melville did this with criminals, here and in other films. Second Breath has an existential value to it, you feel it in the actors, dialogue, and situations. You feel it in the exposition and structure. Second Breath certainly has a lot of setup. It's a pretty long film with a middle that requires a lot of your attention. In the end though I'm not watching a criminal complete acts introduced in the first act, I'm watching the closure to a man's journey of expressing his value as on object of this world.
