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All right, I’ve got four History of Cinema movies to tell you about, so here goes.

Last Wednesday our movie was Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, a Japanese film made in 1950 and that starred Toshiro Mifune.

The story is set in feudal Japan and begins with 3 men taking shelter from a rainstorm underneath a broken-down temple. We then learn of a rape and murder incident that happened a few days earlier, where a man was found dead. The only facts known are that a bandit attacked the man and raped his wife, and that the man was killed (by whom, we don’t know). The movie shows us four sides to the same story: the bandit’s, the wife’s, one of the narrator’s (who claimed to be an eyewitness), and the dead man’s (through a medium). There is no clear picture of which story is true; the audience is left to decide that for themselves. This was the first Kurosawa film that I’ve ever seen. It’s also the only Asian movie we’re going to watch all semester (And yet we’ve already seen three German movies and we’ve got two more German movies on the syllabus-is it just me or are things a bit lopsided here?). The tone is very heavy, and is meant to be thought-provoking. I probably would have liked it better if I hadn’t been sitting next to Bharati. In her “infinite wisdom” (note the sarcasm), she decided that two of the guys in the temple were gay because they were crying at the end. She also kept complaining that the stories didn’t match (apparently she didn’t realize that they weren’t supposed to match), and she couldn’t figure out why the wife had no eyebrows (Japanese women used to shave off their eyebrows when they got married). The thing is, she kept asking Namrata about it every time the wife showed up in the story (apparently she kept expecting Namrata to suddenly know why the wife had no eyebrows). My verdict: I can see Rashomon’s merits, but it’s not my first choice for entertainment.

Sunday’s movie was Francois Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player, a French movie made in 1960.

This was our first example of French New Wave, which is really complicated and I’m not sure I understand it completely, so I’m not even going to try explaining it. This movie concerns a man who was once a world-famous concert pianist, and now plays the piano in a sleazy bar. The man just wants to be left alone, but he keeps getting dragged into the plot. The director of the movie, Francois Truffaut, loved American movies, from several different genres. In Shoot the Piano Player, he wanted to include every element he liked from American movies, even if they seemed incompatible. This is how we end up with a tragedy plot with two bumbling gangsters as the main villains. There’s also voiceover narrations, flashbacks, a song (complete with French and English subtitles), a snow scene, and the list goes on and on. The result is a mish-mash of elements that somehow work. I’ll admit that, even though I didn’t like the movie especially.

Monday night’s movie was Jean-Luc Godard’s My Life to Live, another French movie, made in 1962.

This is another French New Wave movie, but it is very different from Shoot the Piano Player. Whereas Truffaut thought that telling a story was more important than making a statement, Godard thought exactly the opposite (Personally, I think Truffaut’s outlook makes for a more entertaining movie, but I fail to see why you can’t treat both with equal importance). My Life to Live is about a woman who becomes a prostitute because she has no money and no other career prospects (she wants to be a model or an actress, but she keeps getting rejected). A couple of (somewhat inappropriate) things happened while we were watching the movie. First, Derek had brought a keychain that made the sound of a woman having an orgasm when you pushed the button on it (Marisa and I found one of these at Spencer’s last year. Marisa pushed the button out of curiosity, but she didn’t realize it would be so loud. She then got away from it as fast as she could and pretended she didn’t know anything about it ). He set it off once, just to be funny. Then, later on, it fell out of his pocket and started going off again (this was accidental). He couldn’t get it to stop, so he finally had to open the door and throw it out into the hallway. I have no idea what was going on during that part of the movie because we were all laughing at Derek. The other joke came from one scene in the middle of the movie where the woman is in a small bar/billiard hall, watching a guy play pool. It was then that we noticed that the pool table had no pockets. Then we realized that none of the pool tables in this billiard hall had any pockets. We all started making remarks about this, culminating in Brian facetiously saying, “Stupid French pool table!” One of the principles that French New Wave filmmakers like to practice was the “A-Effect” (“A” is short for “alienation”), which is causing the audience to view the movie with some degree of emotional detachment, by employing tactics to remind the audience that what they are seeing is a presentation, not an actual situation. This existed to some extent in Shoot the Piano Player, but it’s really milked for all its worth in My Life to Live. There are too many different tactics used to list them all, but I think the “A-Effect” was a little too successful with me, because not only was I emotionally detached, I really didn’t care that much about any of the characters (I think that’s been my problem with a lot of these movies). However, I can see the merits in the movie, once again.

Last night’s movie was Milos Forman’s Loves of a Blonde, a Czechoslovakian movie made in 1965.

Apparently, the rest of the movies we’re going to see this semester are examples of how French New Wave influenced movies of other countries. This is the first example. There really isn’t much of a plot, so I can’t really summarize it. Our professor said it’s supposed to be a comedy, but nobody really thought it was funny. It was pretty boring (mostly because all the scenes went on for way too long). Everyone decided that nobody in this movie is attractive, even the people who are supposed to be. The only part we found amusing was the frequent occurrence of ‘80s hair (even though the movie was made in 1965). The only other interesting point was when the power to the VCR and projector went out and Brian had to fix it.

Well, if you’ve actually stuck around long enough to read this, I’m very surprised. I’ve got a couple more things I could talk about, but I’ll let them wait. I’ve got all the superhero concepts done, and I’ll be posting them on Saturday. Fencing on Tuesday night was awesome. We started learning sabre, and for some reason, I caught on really quick (Although right now I have no preference between foil and sabre. They both have their advantages and disadvantages). Then we switched back to foil and did a couple bouts. I beat Cherie pretty easily, but what made practice awesome was that I almost beat Ross. We were playing to 5 hits, and I tied him 4-4 before he got the winning hit. I was elated though, because the most I’ve ever scored against him before was one point.

Tomorrow, Liz and I are going to Easton to see The Matrix Revolutions. I watched the first movie last night for the first time in about two years. I knew that there was a bunch of stuff I had forgotten. The problem with The Matrix is that I rarely ever finish watching it (I think I’ve only seen it all the way through about three or four times). I’ll get to the part where Neo and Morpheus are sparring in Kung Fu, and I’ll lose interest. If I can get past that part, I’ll usually stick with it until the end. It’s that part that’s the problem. I just watched Reloaded, literally. Some of the scenes were a bit tedious, but for the most part, the plot gels with the first movie. Of course, I watched it with Liz, which made me realize something. I think I like The Matrix better if I’m watching it with somebody. I think my favorite Matrix-related thing so far is “Final Flight of the Osiris” from The Animatrix. The computer animation in it is amazing (It looks more real than some of the special effects shots in Reloaded).