One of the most interesting elements that is consistently featured in the historiography of The Rules of the Game is, indeed, the story of its coming to be. This essay will focus on the historical context behind The Rules of the Game, its makers, its detractors, and the captivating story behind its resurrection after twenty years in cinematic limbo.
A young boy stands like Peter Pan, hands on his hips against the pale background of his bedroom wall. A light pours through the window before him, casting him brightly despite the darkness in the room. The intersecting beams of the window pane cast a skewed cross across him, this distorted cross moving downward to the right against the wall. Suddenly, a large shadow steps into the frame, a personage of darkness that steals most of the light in the room. The boy is now cast in darkness. Here we have a filmic sequence derived from an appeal to the literature of images, a distorted religiosity beckoning the arrival of a diabolical presence. We have a moving picture demonstrating the shrouding of innocence by the waves of a harsh world, a world frustratingly characterized, as we will later learn, by abusers of power and manipulators of morality. Such flattery and gamesmanship is brought more into the light, as it were, when the light recedes into nighttime.
Not to mention, it’s very scary.
The greatest vampire film of all time is no romance. It does not star beautiful people with pale skin and delicate seduction. There is no high-collared regal wear. There are rats, not bats; and there’s a rodent-like creature in monkish robes who casts monster-like shadows on brown walls. The greatest vampire film of all time is a filthy Expressionist nightmare, filled with sickly frames, and jagged teeth matching a jagged mise-en-scène. Continue reading
Welcome to October, ye aulde scavengers of doorstep candies and defacers of guileless pumpkins. This is a month unto itself in the world of film, a sort of embodied actor dictating the atmosphere and mood of its cinematic output with all the gusto of a mad composer. Where December takes us to the stereo systems, bidding us hear the crooners and choirs in their mystic wonderlands of white, October ushers us manipulatively to dark rooms with dull lights emanating from silver screens. It is a haunting force, not unlike the specters that inhabit it, simultaneously possessing us and scaring us away. October is no mere month, it is a phenomenon, beckoning us to consume fear like we would fun-size chocolates and candy corns. Trick-or-treating, costumes, haunted houses, plumes of dry ice flowing from plastic punch-bowls… none of these exorcise that possessive ghost of October quite like a scary movie. Indeed, the genre of horror film lies at the very heart of Halloween celebration. Continue reading
“The awful thing about life is this: Everybody has their reasons.”—Octave, The Rules of the Game
Perhaps no other line in La Règle du jeu (The Rules of the Game) acts as a fairer summation of the movie’s plots and themes as this one, spoken by Octave, the intervening old man in a complex game of youth, love, and social impetus. It is only fitting, in a meta-filmic sort of way, that Octave is played by the film’s writer, producer, and director, the man that most would consider the greatest of all French auteurs: Jean Renoir. It’s like the author’s own film commentary, nestled into the screenplay itself, cozily and conveniently. Continue reading
Where Jean Gabin portrayed a doomed working class hero in Le jour se lève, in Grand Illusion (La grande illusion), he played perhaps the most hopeful symbol of the victorious proletariat that French Poetic Realism would ever come to offer. Grand Illusion uses his character as but one of several others showing the disintegration of the old world, and the rebuilding of a new one after the earth-shattering imbalance of World War I. It tells the story of humanity, divided vertically by borders and divided horizontally by social class. It tells the story of the war that shattered these distinctions: gone were the days of gentleman’s battles, glorious deaths, and the rules of the game. A new world order, one more unified in both suffering and success was being born. Out of this carnage and pain could come a new type of freedom, one both symbolic and practical, one that would elevate the lower class and destroy the arbitrary divisions that threatened humankind. Continue reading
“A killer! Now there’s something to gossip about! Sure, I’m a killer, but killers are a dime a dozen! They’re everywhere! Everyone kills! They just do it quietly, so you don’t see. It’s like sand. It gets deep inside you.”
So exclaims Jean Gabin’s famous proletarian hero from his apartment balcony to the curious masses below in Marcel Carné’s 1939 masterpiece, Le jour se lève.
Many critics, when asked which movie acts as the quintessential example of film noir, would say The Maltese Falcon. When asked which film most exemplifies the precepts of the screwball comedy, many experts would likely tag It Happened One Night. When it comes to the American Western, they likely cite Stagecoach. Well, in my opinion, if you were to ask which film most embodies the general characteristics, images, and ideas of French Poetic Realism, the answer would be Le jour se lève. Continue reading
Around this time last year, this blog experienced more traffic in one weekend than it did for the entirety of 2015. I could take personal affront at that, but I won’t. Obviously, you liked what you saw.
With that in mind, here is my updated countdown of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Several new chapters have been added since last year’s countdown, and my opinions have, slightly, changed as to how I want to rank these chapters. I hope that you enjoy what you read.
(If you read this special last year, feel free to skip to the bottom of this page to begin the countdown. That’s because I’m just going to recycle the same article from last year.)
The Marvel Cinematic Universe contains five short films to go along with its television shows and feature films. Most people wouldn’t even go to the lengths of including these films in an MCU countdown, for one because they are clearly marketing materials designed to increase DVD/Blu-Ray sales, and for two because they are mostly pointless and of questionable quality. This fails to recognize the nature of the MCU as a universe though. These stories exist in that universe. So, they must be included. Continue reading
Here we are, the first divergence from the order of films that I took in my 2015 edition of this countdown. Where the penultimate spot last year was occupied by “Marvel One-Shot: Item 47”, this year, it will be occupied by “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Thor’s Hammer.” I’m sure you’re already reeling in shock; but there is far more to come, so brace yourself.
Remember that quote from Brian Winderbaum, which I used in my review of “The Consultant”? He said that the goal of the Marvel One-Shots were to create “a fun way to experiment with new characters and ideas, but more importantly it’s a way for us to expand the Marvel Cinematic Universe and tell stories that live outside the plot of our features.” That the One-Shots are about characters is the probably the most important thing to take from this. And one of the most beloved characters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is, undeniably, Agent Phil Coulson.
A Slice of Cake 