My 1950s in Cinema

Have you heard of Letterboxd? It's a social networking site for people who watch movies. It's like Goodreads for Godard fans. You can log what you watch, rate what you've watched, make lists, follow and be followed and all that other standard social networking stuff. The selection of films is good but not great. Nonetheless, for me the site's proven to be a fun way to wrack my brain and remember all the films I've seen. I've started with 1950s and made a list for each year's releases. Organised links are on my Lists page. My Letterboxd list page is here.

Samuel Fuller

One of America's best film directors, and one of its most distinctive auteurs, was born in 1912, lived eighty five years and made the kind of raw, brutal and primitive (in the most positive sense) films that independent filmmakers have seemingly forgotten how to make. It's always a pleasure to pull another Sam Fuller picture out of the vault, or The Pirate Bay, and make it play. So far, I've seen:

• Fixed Bayonets! (1951) about comradery during the Korean war.
• Park Row (1952), an absolute gem about the beginnings of the newspaper business in 19th century New York.
• Pickup on South Street (1953), where men steal and ideologies crash in one of the cinema's greatest film noir.
• Forty Guns (1957), a visually dazzling pre-David Lynch western with Barbara Stanwyck.
• Merrill's Marauders (1962), where WWII Burma comes alive and dies.

And there are many more to go, but in doses, man, in doses. Every hour spent with Samuel Fuller is an hour well spent. I'm that way with Yasujiro Ozu, too. Both men made amazing art.

Tender Is The Night

I first read The Great Gatsby in high school. I stole the book. It still sits on my shelf. Later, I watched the Jack Clayton adaption, written by Francis Ford Coppola, and I look forward to seeing the Baz Luhrmann one, too. Later still, I played the great Gatsby video game. Somewhere between the movie and the game, I'd also read the book a second time, and maybe a third time. I still get the itch to pick it up and read it (or load it onto my ereader). It's a great novel, and a short one. But it wasn't until a few years ago, i.e. about a decade after high school, that I read anything else by F. Scott Fitzgerald: Tender Is The Night. It was nothing like Gatsby, not as elegantly written and not as compact, which made it a disappointment, but that's about as smart a reaction as hating cats because they're not dogs. Time passes. I remember Gatsby as a whole. I remember impressions from Tender Is The Night. Impress yourself with this:

Nicole seized Dick's arm crying, "Look!" Dick turned in time to see what took place in half a minute. At a Pullman entrance two cars off, a vivid scene detached itself from the tenor of many farewells. The young woman with the helmet-like hair to whom Nicole had spoken made an odd dodging little run away from the man to whom she was talking and plunged a frantic hand into her purse; then the sound of two revolver shots cracked the narrow air of the platform. Simultaneously the engine whistled sharply and the train began to move, momentarily dwarfing the shots in significance. Abe waved again from his window, oblivious to what had happened. But before the crowd closed in, the others had seen the shots take effect, seen the target sit down upon the platform.

I have the urge to read both novels again.