Tag: classic film

Film by Alex Sheremet
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A still from Woody Allen's classic romantic comedy, "Annie Hall," depicting Woody Allen and Diane Keaton flirting in bed, as analyzed and reviewed by the world's leading Woody Allen critic, Alex Sheremet, for the automachination literary magazine.

Why Woody Allen’s “Annie Hall” (1977) Is Still A Classic

I’ve praised both “Play It Again, Sam” (1972) and “The Front” (1976) as examples of good early Woody drama, but it’s really “Annie Hall” that kicks off Allen’s Golden Age, for it’s the beginning of his best characterizations, best visuals, deepest narratives, and the overall sense that he had ‘made it’ as a filmmaker of ability and substance. This is because “Annie Hall” takes many of his now-classic preoccupations with sex, death, relationships, inevitability, and intellectual posturing (including his own!), and creates a genuine narrative out of it, not by force or gags, but simply by dropping some great characters into a landscape, and seeing how a narrative unfolds out of them. There is also a seeming simplicity, here, in Allen’s ‘Alvy’ persona, that absolutely misleads viewers into sympathizing with Alvy, rather than Annie. In short, it is Alvy that constantly spouts self-deprecating gems and rich but down-to-earth posits that aggrandize him as both an Everyman, and as a kind of ‘hero,’ who’s gone through it, and gotten over it, too — “it” being ‘confusing’ relationships, a lack of self-assurance, or whatever else that might be imbued into the film, yet isn’t really there. The film starts with direct exposition, as Alvy Singer tells the audience of his two key metaphors for life: […]

Film by Ezekiel Yu
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A shot from Ingmar Berman's "Persona", depicting silhouetted faces upside-down, as reviewed by poet and critic Ezekiel Yu for the automachination literary magazine.

Silence as Substance: Reviewing Ingmar Bergman’s “Persona” (1966)

The interior of the projector at the beginning and the end of Persona—and, at the midpoint, the celluloid disintegrating around a still shot of Bibi Andersson’s icy mien—signals to the viewer a self-awareness that is the raison d’etre of the entire work; a trickery on the part of the filmmakers that beguiles in practically every frame, inviting one’s study while at the same time rebuffing the kinds of analyses that attempt to freeze its “meaning” into some monolithic interpretation.

The director, like Prospero parading his illusive stagecraft to a captive audience, is making it clear that this film is literally that: film, whole spools of it being fed through the projector and kindled into motion by carbon arcs. Also shown, at the very end, are cameramen operating the machinery capturing the material out of which the film is made. Any discussion of the “inner” narrative—that of Andersson’s nurse, Alma, caring for the famous and willfully mute actress Elisabet Vogler, played by Liv Ullmann—must, therefore, be contextualized by this structural decision.

With Persona, then, it is important to keep in mind that surface is key, working in a top-down manner upon the narrative(s) it conforms; just as a mask conforms one’s perception of the mask-bearer, while all the while concealing the bearer’s true nature from the perceiver, whose speculations are circumscribed by whatever the mask presents. So it is that the face of the Other allures, and disquiets. […]

Film by Jessica Schneider
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A still from David Lynch's "Eraserhead", featuring Jack Nance with his iconic hair, as reviewed and analyzed in Jessica Schneider's retrospective analysis of the film.

Embracing the Oddness: David Lynch’s “Eraserhead” (1977)

Have you ever thought of life in terms of allegory? Where everything is an illusion, even reality itself? And secondly, is it necessary to ‘understand’ all parts of a particular something, especially if that something is reflective of one’s man’s neurosis (or not)? If you’re looking for straight answers in David Lynch’s Eraserhead, you will be disappointed. Rather, in order to welcome this film, one must first embrace the idea of allegory, sort of akin to Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. (An influence for this film.) I mean, think about it—once you come to accept that Gregor Samsa has, in fact, turned into a giant bug, the story itself is actually pretty straightforward. The same can somewhat be said for Eraserhead. Once you come to accept the distorted universe in which Henry lives, then it can sort of fall into place.

First, let’s begin with the setting. Henry Spencer (Jack Nance) lives in an industrial, dilapidated hellhole with no trees or greens, merely buildings, rain, mud, muck, and plumes of smoke. He works as a printer at a factory, lives in a crappy building with low ceilings, and has holes in his bedding, with no space to grow or bloom. In short, we can presume that he hates his life. Across from him lives an attractive, flirty woman who informs him that someone named Mary wants him to come over for dinner. (Said woman later seduces him.) When they speak, there is this aloof detachment to their voices, as though they’re moving about in a dream. Then, when Henry joins Mary (Charlotte Stewart) and her parents for dinner, conversation goes as (somewhat) such: […]