Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970) (Italy) Great & honest movie about a power, politics, police, & murder.
I've only seen two of Elio Petri's films, this one and
The 10th Victim. But I'll say that the guy definitively has a predilection for murdering those you have sex with.
And this weird sexual-killing dynamic that drives both films is underscored with some social satrize. In
The 10th victim it was media and consumerism, while in
Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspeicion, its as you said, politics, power and da polize!
Investigation is really heavy-handed though. It really is a film about super-decadent right-wingers that take an glutinous, almost frenzied joy in nailing those dirty lefties with anything they got! But the movie skids this by how oddly intensive and oddly giddy it is about everything it does. And the main character subtlety aping Mussolini in several scenes was really fun.
Plus dat score! Elio definitively knows how to put music in his films.
The Baader Meinhof-Complex (2008) (Germany) Insane true story, great acting, production... a real action movie that actually happened.
Funnily enough, when my father went to rent this movie he accidentally brought home "
Baader Meinhof" from 2002 instead, which turned out to be a fairly mediocre movie. I was wondering what all the fuzz was about until I entered the video story and realized that he had brought home the wrong film. I imagine that this is what people who are scammed by Asylum films feels
.
Honestly though... I barely remember
Baader Meinhof Complex, which is extraordinarily rare for me since I tend to remember films very clearly. I remember thinking that it was just... alright.. and that the lead lady was pretty sexy.
Stalingrad (1993) (Germany) Better than full-metal jacket.
Epic, disturbing movie, with solid acting. No romanticism here.
Stalingrad's idea of a "happy ending" is the realization that it's better to die of cold than it is to die from heat exhaustion. When that is your vantage point, I say that you present a pretty bleak worldview.
But yeah
Stalingrad is a damn good film. If you want to compare it favorably to something -- without causing heinous sacrilege -- then I think
Enemy at the Gates is a good candidate. Both are about Stalingrad but Enemy at the Gates conveys none of the horror, bleakness and realism that Stalingrad conveys, nor is it as uncompromissing as Stalingrad is.
Paths Of Glory (1957) (USA) Stanley Kubrick, well-known but often get's overlooked because it's so old.
Back in the days when Kubrick was still a young man and angry at the world, and did not care to hide said anger by conveying it through subtle themes and motifs. Almost all of Kubrick films have an underscoring of anti-authorian, the powerful are evil, thoughts, but
Paths of Glory is just a middle finger to the entire establishment.
[/QUOTE]Fitzcarraldo (1982) (Germany) Not for everyone by any means but I love every minute of it. Herzog is the man. Aguirre... as well.[/QUOTE]
Honestly... it's always a bit jarring to see Kinski play someone that is supposed to be quite a decent guy. That man is the embodiement of deranged evil
. Fitzcarraldo is great but I've always leaned more towards Aguirre.
Django (1966) (Italy) The movie that inspired Django Unchained, and about 75 other movies. Like Rambo meets
Django is just iconic. There are so many striking images in it. Italian cinema definitely had a tradition of creating visual- and atmospheric-oriented movies. And Django is a prime example of how you can use those two to markedly elevate your material. You said that Great Silence had one of the best endings ever (with is true) -- and personally I think that Django hauling that coffin through the mud, with that awesome music playing, is one of the best beginnings of all time. What a tone-setter!
I also just love how nillisistic and cruel the movie feels. Django isn't just violent, it's downright mean-spirited, and unlike violence - mean-spiritedness dosen't age. Many of the characters have their introduction by commiting some sort of increadibly callous deed. Wherever it'll be the KKK-general shooting Mexican pesants for sport or the Mexican general slicing off the guys ear just for the lulz. Even Django turns have quite an evil side - despite posing as a stand-up guy for so long in the narrative. In Django - you'll find evil in whatever corner you look in. And the gothic, almost Lucio Fulchi styled set-design definitively add to this cruel undertone.
The Great Silence (1968) (Italy) another Sergio Corbucci classic Spaghetti western. One of the best movie endings of all time
Yeah it was so great that they couldn't show it in certain countries!
They even had to go back and re-shoot the ending so that it could be shown in those areas.
But... one of the other reasons why I love The Great Silence is that it's a brillian political subversion of the western genre. I'll repost something I wrote a while ago in response to Steven Segal bringing left-wing populist trends to the action genre.
While reading your article, I couldn't help but to draw parallels to the Western genre. As said in your article, during the late 80's/early 90's Seagal blew left-winds onto the action genre, which through Stallone and Schwarzenegger had during the 80's established a predominantly right-wing orientation. And he did it through populist means! Subverting the political landscape of populist action flicks.
The same trend you could see in Westerns during the late 60's, early 70's. Up until the 60's, American Westerns had predominatly taken a relatively conservative stance in their persona. Sure there where liberal-oriented westerns like High Noon or The Ox-Bow Incident, but the vast majority excuded a right-wing slant, (ie: John Wayneism).
But during the late 60's, early 70's, this narrative was heavily subverted. There where American revisionist movies like Soldier Blue. But it was the Italians and their Spaghetti Westerns that really cranked out populist left-wing Westerns en masse at the time. With fims like: A Bullet For the General, The Big Gundown, Tepepa, A Proffesional Gun, Companeros, and The Great Silence, etc.
Just to give an example, take the briliant political subversion in The Great Silence.
The Great Silence is a movie about bounty hunters. In most American Westerns, bounty hunters where men fulfilling an important task, weeding out criminals and bandits that prevented the spread of civilisations. Bounty Hunters are basically good guys, often being sheriff's and the like. It's basically a right-wing message, people are immoral and bad, so the goverment has to send someone to bring back order and goodness to civilization. (and even Sergio Leone and most other Spaghetti Westerns presented something akin to this)
However, what Sergio Corbucci does in The Great Silence, is to put this practice into it's socioeconomical context. Criminals aren't criminals becuse they are "bad" or "evil" or anything inherent like it was in the classical Hollywood Westerns. They are just ordinary men unable to find work or pay their rent and therefore are forced to turn to a life of crime - and the socioeconomical conditions that creates these problems are orchestrated by the wealthy elite for their own benefit.
So the societal system is created by the elite to enrich them, while causing destitution to among the poor. The mass of criminality this then causes then creates the need for Bounty Hunters, whom the rich hire to kill the criminals they've themselves created through their policy. The Bounty Hunters, being antagonists, go about this business with extreme sadism and callousness, killing what are basically good and decent people that have no other alternative.
Corbucci does this to illustrate the faultiness of law and justice. The rich legally impoverish the poor, and then legally hire gunmen to kill of the poor whom have turned into criminals out of necessity. Basically, it's the old line about law and justice being institutionally designed to serve only only the rich - and everyone else (the poor, racial minorities, freethinkers, etc) suffer because of it.
And Corbucci delivers all this political commentary within the bounds of populist Spaghetti Westerns, subverting the established conservative order after his own belifs. Just like Seagal did.
A Bullet for the General (1966) (Italy) Gian Maria Volonte & Klaus Kinski in a western about the Mexican revolution! 3 awesome things in one
Definitively one of the best Zapata Westerns. It's this one or
Companjeros. Great to see a team-up between Gian Maria Volonte and Kinski.
The only reason the recent Mad Max was any good was because most of the stunts and explosions were real, that guy gets it, even though he forgot to add a story.
The Serious Movie Discussion group had like a 5-page civil war about that subject a while ago. Which the pro-side won by a Cro Cop styled head kick and a follow-up G&P in the Fourth Round, which was aggrevated by that Dan Miragliotta not knowing when to stop the goddamn fight. So you better get in line and praise the movie damit!
Personally though, I think the storytelling in
Fury Road is superb. It's methodology is basically to streamline the whole plot through seemless world-building and telling visuals so that the thematic subtexts (as well as the action) gets enough Lebensraum to breath.
Take the theme of slavery as an example of this. Virtually everyone in the movie is in some relationship of bondage to Immortal Joe. The brides have been brainwashed into becoming his breeders through ideological-isolation. The kamikaze-boys are his "half-life" cannon fodder that he has brainwashed through religion to want to martyr themselves on the Fury Road. The "mothers" are made into living milk-machines. Furiosa is his slave-soldier. And Max himself is enslaved and used as a blood bag. Everyone in the citadel has been dehumanized into an object meant to serve Immortal Joe. He has created a world where he is the only real human, and everyone else is a dehumanized slave molded to serve his desires. And listening to the wives dialoge -- they've figured this system out. Themes like this one saturates the entire movie. It gives it an identity. That kind of consistent, thematic world-building just makes me all giddy inside.
These are different issues you're complaining about here. Authenticity in action, however you happen to define that, has nothing to do with "how to tell stories." In fact, the stories in Jackie Chan movies are some of the thinnest and silliest of all martial arts movies whether from Hong Kong or Hollywood.
I don't think that he was conflating storytelling with how to present action. I just think he bunched those two subjects into the same paragraph.
But... come on bro, by HK standards of silliness Jackie Chan has to be somewhere in the middle.
They play a diffrent ball game over there. Just a few days ago I was watching this movie
The Maidens of Heavenly Mountains with Gong Li and Bridgett Lin and it was just spastic what-the-fuckery from the get-go.
That said, take the
Police Story series as an example of just how idiosyncratic Jackie Chan's style can be. It's really jarring to go from the Jackie Chan-directed Police Story 1 and 2 to the third Police Story that he didn't direct. Jackie's narrative is so intense and kinetic and scattered that it's creates such a stark contrast with the more conventional narrative in Police Story 3.
