Peter's Film Viewing Journal (The Resnais-ties Festival : Part 1)

An attempt to write my random and initial thoughts for every film (of note) that I see, especially retrospective selections I have viewed on the big screen, with little editing and lots of brevity and focusing on thoughts/reaction, not criticism; taking the tone of "notes to self".
Alain Resnais (pronounced like the name"Rene") is a filmmaker I have come to admire only recently, having seen the incredible Last Year at Marienbad, for the first time, in a theater earlier in the year. That expereince, combined with my appreciation for his first non-documentary feature Hiroshima Mon Amour has sent me looking for more of his work.

Resnais is one of the lucky filmmakers who have their significantly lesser known films available on DVD in America. A number of films he did in the 80s have been put out from Kimstim in a box set called Alain Resnais, a Decade in film. I decided to view some of these to get an idea of what he has done in the latter part of his career. (I caught his newest film Wild Grass at the New York Film Festival in September. It was wild indeed. Need to see that one again before I can get my head around it)

Love Unto Death
1984
Directed By: Alain Resnais
DVD

When I was watching this one, I kept thinking about Fassbinder. Not because they have the same style, but because they both share a very similar combination of playfulness and command of the cinematic language.

He does an interesting, bordering on annoying, thing in this film - he separates almost every scene with a shot of stars shimmering and a musical interlude. It is strange but sometimes very nice.

He does a nice job of eloquently addressing love's relationship with death. The acting is top notch and on an equal level. A really nice surprise.

Melo
1986
Directed By: Alain Resnais
DVD

As much as I have grown into someone who has a large problem with films that do not act like films (by this I mean ones that rely too much upon story, or ones that rely too much on dialogue thereby acting more like literature or plays than the visual medium of film) I also despise when something is dismissed simply for these reasons.

This film, Melo, is taken from a play and adapted by Resnais himself (very rare for him to write his own screenplay apparently) and he has no problem in shooting it like he were shooting a play on the stage- long takes, all interiors, very artificial looking sets. It kind of shocked me that this master of the film form should abandon all that technique this time out. It almost felt like an experiment, one to see if he could shoot something and make it feel completely NOT like a film.

If the acting would've not been as good as it is, this would have been interminable. And yet, I couldn't be pulled away from it. I still felt like I was in the hands of a master. What a filmmaker! Even his disasters are interesting and spellbinding.

More to come...

-Peter Rinaldi