Watching (for the first time in far too long):

Watching:

Watching:

Watching:

Watching: PORT OF CALL (1948), dir. Ingmar Bergman.

Watching: RED DESERT (1964), dir. Michelangelo Antonioni.

Watching: A SHIP TO INDIA (1947), dir. Ingmar Bergman.

Watching: DISHONORED (1931), dir. Josef von Sternberg.

Watching: THEY LIVE BY NIGHT (1948), dir. Nicholas Ray.

Watching: LA NOTTE (1961), dir. Michelangelo Antonioni

Watching: CRISIS (1946), dir. Ingmar Bergman.

Watching: TAKE AIM AT THE POLICE VAN (1960), dir. Seijun Suzuki.

Watching: UGETSU (1953), dir. Kenji Mizoguchi.

Note: this is an edited/updated version of Sunday’s “Input of Note” selection from issue 0033 my MacroParentheticals newsletter. You can sign up here, if so inclined.

Continuing from Wednesday: the first film remains my favorite of the saga; the second is a “perfect film” but I still prefer the first; and, though I’d forgotten much of Part III, now CODA, the re-edit – though only five minutes shorter than the original – felt different, more assured, and marked a fitting conclusion: the power of a defined existential purpose.

My opinion of PART III still holds in its new guise: Sophia Coppola’s performance is, like the film itself, unfairly maligned (I’m not sure anyone could’ve done much with the part – a plot device, at best, thankless from the first ink spilled – and I suspect that complaints about her are little more than a convenient personification of critical disappointment in the film itself); the mirroring variations and riffs on the themes established in Parts I and II are fascinating and tragic though meaningless unless you’re intimately familar with Parts I and II; and, though the Vatican plot is confusing as hell, it’s not a bad film by any metric (the fifth season of THE WIRE being comparable: a lesser season of THE WIRE is still better than 99% of television out there).

Recommended – though only if you carve out the time to rewatch the whole saga: what’s the point in listening to only the final notes of a symphony?

Christmas viewing.

Watching: THE SILENCE (1963), dir. Ingmar Bergman.

Watching: PALE FLOWER (1964), dir. Masahiro Shinoda.

Watching: THE CHASE (1946), dir. Arthur Ripley.

Watching, 17nov2020: MAD LOVE (1935); dir. Karl Freund.

Watching, 17aug2020: THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY, dir. Ingmar Bergman (1961).

Watching, 20jul2020: Z, dir. Costa-Gavras (1969).

Watching, 05jun2020: IRMA VEP, dir. Olivier Assayas (1996).

Watching, 06may2020: SANSHIRO SUGATA, dir. Akira Kurosawa (1943).

Watching, 29apr2020: NIGHTFALL, dir. Jacques Tourneur (1956). (First Criterion Channel pick; could do a lot worse than a Tourneur adaptation of a David Goodis novel.)