Re-seeing three modern classics
Yet again, TCM shows more good-to-great movies than any other channel. The colors of the French flag represent liberty, equality, and fraternity. Krysztok Kieslowski directed a trio of movies in the ‘90s that explored these ideals. One of those will appear as ‘fraternity.’
François Truffaut’s The Four Hundred Blows (1959) still holds up decades after the French New Wave because of pre-teen character Antoine Doinel’s mercurial complexity. When I saw this movie in college, I felt great empathy with that character and his situation. However, in re-viewing it, Antoine more than assists in creating his situation. His parents are strapped for cash, which is part of the reason for their random complacency, cheerfulness, and desertion. He’s desperate to be free, whether from their boxed in lives or the
pigheadedness of his school or the charming boisterousness of Paris and he’ll lie or steal to survive. His best friend René sticks with him as long as he can, but his dysfunctional parents have more money and he knows how to play the game. Jean-Pierre Léaud, who became a major star, and Patrick Auffay are natural, insouciant, and tough as the boys.
pigheadedness of his school or the charming boisterousness of Paris and he’ll lie or steal to survive. His best friend René sticks with him as long as he can, but his dysfunctional parents have more money and he knows how to play the game. Jean-Pierre Léaud, who became a major star, and Patrick Auffay are natural, insouciant, and tough as the boys.
Patrick Auffay and Jean-Pierre Léaud |
Could Hal Ashby’s The Landlord (1970) be made today? Some of Spike Lee’s movies have dealt with similar subject matter, but not any from the past decade. Beau Bridges plays a wealthy, feckless young man who decides to buy a Brooklyn Heights brownstone as a showcase, but first he has to deal with the current tenants, played by Pearl Bailey, Louis Gosset Jr. and Diana Sands, and Mel Stewart. They’re not about to move out conveniently and give him a few lessons in the real ways of the world for the poor.
Pearl Bailey and Lee Grant |
Equality in this sense reveals characters being laid low. Gossett astonishes in one scene where he has been naïvely betrayed by Sands’ and Bridges’ characters and goes mad. He frightens on a profound level, more than any horror or science fiction incarnation. He’s sensational. It’s a tremendous disappointment that a performer as intriguing as Marki Bey was never used as centrally in commercial movies again. (Of course, one could say the same about Lonette McKee, Irene Cara, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Cynda Williams, Meagan Good, as the years have passed by).
Kieslowski’s Red (1994) focuses on the relationship between a compassionate, intelligent young woman and an alienated, disconnected older man. These characters, played by Irène Jacob and Jean-Louis Trintignant, meet because she accidentally hits, but luckily doesn’t kill, his dog. The fragile thread of life and its omnipresent possibility of being cut also encompass love, friendship, ambition, and ideals. All of this hovers around the deceptively simple story of this movie and it reaches an epiphany in its penultimate scene.
Irene Jacob and Jean-Louis Trintignant |
There’s a secondary character that has been dealing with a romantic challenge and it hit me that he is the judge, but thirty years younger. How will he meet the model because they should be together? Kieslowski reveals this in the final moments that pull together the three movies in his trilogy. I’ve seen White, a dark tragicomic satire, but not Blue. After seeing Red, I’m looking forward to it.
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