Films I Watched This Week — Apr 7–13, 2025
BUtterfield 8 (1960)
The film revolves around the life of a high-class prostitute who wants to amend her way, as she is convinced that she has finally found Mr. Right. Elizabeth Taylor won her first Academy Award for her performance in the role.
Viridiana (1961)
Luis Buñuel is one of the most brilliant and cynical directors, a man full of sexual fetishes, surreal and mistaken identities, and idiocy of normal behaviors taken into a different context. He also had a streak of pessimism, presenting the cruel and destructive views of human existence. Yet his films are never bitter or lacking charm. First and foremost, Buñuel was a satirist and a master of black comedy. It was only the topics he chose to satirize which didn’t go over very well with the public. Viridiana is not anti-Catholic nor against religion, it just told a scandalous story about a virtuous nun, her perverted uncle, and a hansom cousin who inevitably talks Viridiana in leaving the convent and to give into her sexual temptations; with the films last scene showing her entering the cousins bedroom hanging her head in defeat to join him and his lover into a ménage-a-trois.
When originally released, the film caused a tremendous stir within the Catholic world, starting with the Vatican’s newspaper, which was instantly up in arms with the film, describing it as “blasphemous”. The Spanish government, who had initially approved the film’s submission at Cannes, suddenly banned the film; and it wasn’t shown in Spain until 1977. Luis Buñuel shot Viridiana in the early months of 1961 in his native Spain, and it was the first film he had made since his departure for the United States and Mexico in 1939. Many of Buñuel's admirers wondered why he would return to Spain at a time when the fascist dictator Franco was still in power. He told various stories, one was that he was offered four times his salary by a producer, and another was that he felt nostalgia for his homeland. A third that he didn’t mention, I suspect, was to make this particular film.
Viridiana (1961) is on my TOP 100 GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME LIST
Modern Times (1936)
Making Modern Times in 1936, nearly a decade after audiences were now used to sound films, appeared downright perverse. Audiences were used to the rapid dialog sound comedies of the Marx Brothers and W. C. Fields and were no longer interested in silents. Charlie Chaplin’s refusal to get involved in sound was stretching the limits of fan’s dedications to him and of his character, the Little Tramp. Modern Times didn’t do so good at the box office, yet it is now considered his greatest achievement, even though at the time it was considered a huge risk for Chaplin and the future of his career. Charlie Chaplin, I believe, is the greatest comedian since the invention of the camera. Modern Times was Chaplin’s first overtly political-themed film, a comedy that explored the political fears of the common man vs. the machine. Its unflattering portrayal of the industrial society and the mechanization world crushing the everyday man generated controversy in some quarters upon its initial release. Chaplin always insisted that the Tramp would never speak because it would destroy the magic of his character. In Modern Times, which would be the last appearance of the Little Tramp, he decided to break that promise. Chaplin does have the Tramp speak through song, even though we don’t really understand what he is saying. Does it really matter? I guess Chaplin thought if Greta Garbo finally spoke, why not have the Little Tramp do so, too?
Modern Times (1936) is on TOP 100 GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME LIST
Flee (2021)
Forced to leave his home country of Afghanistan as a young child with his mother and siblings, Amin now grapples with how a secret he's kept for over 20 years will affect his future in Denmark. Amin looks back over his life, opening up for the first time about his past, his trauma, the truth about his family, and his acceptance of his own sexuality. It is a heartbreaking tale that Danish director Jonas Poher Rasmussen tells brilliantly, all through the beautiful creativity of animated drawings. Organically mixing both documentary and animation is quite a brilliant cinematic approach to the authenticity of its material. When it slips from animation to live action, Rasmussen is giving viewers a reminder of the reality of the story, and when it includes the arguments between himself and Amin about the direction of the documentary, that’s reality, too. Flee takes us on both a harrowing and hopeful journey across land and sea, showing the challenges and horrific experiences of what it means to be a refugee, and find a place to call home.
Rashomon (1950)
Rashomon is a film that depicts the rape of a woman and the murder of her samurai husband through the widely differing accounts of four eyewitnesses. Rashomon was the first Japanese film that became a huge international hit all around the world especially here in the west. The film won numerous awards including the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. It also was the first foreign film that set box office records and made people who never would have given a second glance at a film with subtitles, now a second look. Rashomon and its non-linear storyline was revolutionary in the way films were conceived, as its screenplay contained four separate testimonies that did not match each other. There was no ‘final’ correct version of what really happened. It was also the first film to use flashbacks that might or might not be the truth on what really happened within those flashbacks.
In any movie, when an audience is provided with a flashback, we automatically assume this flashback that is given to use reflects the truth. But films can lie. Even to its audiences who can seem to forget that flashbacks reflect a point of view, a point of view which could easily be inaccurate, misinterpreted and skewed. Films which treat their audiences intelligently realize this, and less ambitious films unfortunately do not, using flashbacks as a lazy technique to spoon feed audience information. Rashomon was one of the first films to supply first-person eyewitness accounts that were radically different from one another. In one sequence an eyewitness even channeled an account from the grave given by a psychic medium! What makes Rashomon so revolutionary and shocking was that no version was the truth, and every version was. Kurosawa states in his autobiography, “Human beings are unable to be honest with themselves about themselves. They cannot talk about themselves without embellishing.” Rashomon and its unorthodox style influenced several other films throughout the years including The Usual Suspects, Run Lola Run and Hero directed by Yimou Zhang. In all films before this audiences used flashbacks or dream sequences that reflected the truth. This film reflects that the truth is correct through the point of view of the person telling it; but isn’t necessarily the truth itself. After this film’s release people referred to this concept as the ‘Rashomon effect’, and once a phrase like that becomes universal you know the film accomplished something.Rashomon (1950) is on TOP 100 GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME LIST
As an eBay Partner, Classic Art Films may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page.
Follow my film diary on Letterboxd.
