Speaker 1: What kind of a show you guys putting.
Speaker 2: On here today?
Speaker 1: You're not interested in armed now? No, look, we're going
Speaker 1: to do this thing.
Speaker 2: We're going to have a conversation.
Speaker 3: Hey, film spotters Adam and Josh here. We wrapped up
Speaker 3: our sixth film Dissident Cinema Marathon last week. That was
Speaker 3: our conversation about The Circle and Adam, I think it
Speaker 3: was clear during that conversation and from all our previous discussions,
Speaker 3: we've not had a dune in the bunch. This has
Speaker 3: been a really great marathon.
Speaker 4: That is absolutely true. I think we both were very
Speaker 4: high on all six films. Would recommend that people see
Speaker 4: all six of those films if they have not had
Speaker 4: a chance to follow along with this marathon. Turns out,
Speaker 4: after our conversation about the Circle and the ending, the
Speaker 4: mysteries of the ending, the ambiguities of Jafar Panahi, he
Speaker 4: tricked us. There there's an alternate reading that probably is
Speaker 4: the accurate alternate reading. We'll link to that in our
Speaker 4: show notes if you are curious. The Dissident Cinema Marathon
Speaker 4: is dedicated to films that depict or openly confront fascism
Speaker 4: in various forums, I'm going to save the reading of
Speaker 4: the titles, Josh, because I'm going to get to them
Speaker 4: when we get to our first awards category here in
Speaker 4: a moment. But I will remind our listeners that you
Speaker 4: can always find the full lineup for any marathon at
Speaker 4: film spotting dot net slash marathons, or just go to
Speaker 4: the main page and click on marathons right there at
Speaker 4: the top. That is where you can find all of
Speaker 4: them we have done. I think this is either number
Speaker 4: fifty one or fifty two. They're all about eliminating our
Speaker 4: cinematic blind spots. You had. All six of these were
Speaker 4: blind spots for you. I think I had seen two
Speaker 4: of them, the first two The Great Dictator in Rome
Speaker 4: Open City, though, as we covered when we discussed those,
Speaker 4: it was like seeing them fresh because it had been
Speaker 4: since being an undergrad that I had watched both of
Speaker 4: those films. Let's go ahead and jump in. We do
Speaker 4: have of at the last minute, a name for these awards.
Speaker 4: Do you want to announce that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think we found a good one here. We
Speaker 3: put the word out on our last discussion the Circle,
Speaker 3: but we didn't get a ton right away, so set
Speaker 3: out the call again today on the film Spotting Family Discord.
Speaker 3: Thank you to those family members who weighed in. We
Speaker 3: got some good suggestions there, but I think we're going
Speaker 3: to go with one that showed up on Blue Sky
Speaker 3: when I mentioned it just a couple of hours ago.
Speaker 3: And this comes from mjs over on Blue Sky. You
Speaker 3: can find mjs as at the movie Vampire. And we're
Speaker 3: going to go with the Partisans, which, of course you
Speaker 3: know that phrase has a lot of meetings, but in
Speaker 3: the context of this marathon, and particularly in the context
Speaker 3: of Rome, Open City refers to the Italian resistance movement
Speaker 3: in World War Two. So I think we both sort
Speaker 3: of instinctively gravitated towards the Partisans, and we're going to
Speaker 3: go with that.
Speaker 4: Like it very much. So let's hand out our first partisan.
Speaker 4: It is for supporting Performance. We don't separate by gender here.
Speaker 4: We just hand out one supporting performance award, one lead
Speaker 4: performance award. That's what makes it so tough. The Great
Speaker 4: Dictator you might be looking at Jack Oaki, who played
Speaker 4: the Dictator of Bacteria. He was actually Oscar nominated for
Speaker 4: that performance. Josh Reginald Gardner was Commander Schultz Henry Daniel
Speaker 4: Garbage in Rome Open City. You've got Veto and Nikki
Speaker 4: Eurico as Marcello. There's the gentleman who played man Freddie
Speaker 4: as well, Marcello Pagliero. No Regrets for Our Youth has
Speaker 4: three candidates, at least the man who played Nogi. I
Speaker 4: think you'd have to consider Professor Yagahara, that character, the
Speaker 4: actor who played him, and Itokawa as well.
Speaker 2: Ze.
Speaker 4: How about Marcel Bozoufi as Vogo. We talked about him
Speaker 4: quite a bit during our performance. The photo journalist maybe
Speaker 4: as well, played by Jacques Perin. I could see you, Josh,
Speaker 4: pulling a bit of an end around here and selecting
Speaker 4: a character from the Sorrow and the Pity, even though
Speaker 4: it's a documentary. Wouldn't be surprised at all if that's
Speaker 4: what's coming here, but would be a bit of an
Speaker 4: odd choice. Finally, the Circle, there's a Rezu, very very
Speaker 4: major character, though a supporting performance, played by Mariam Parvin
Speaker 4: ALMANI did you select from any of those that I
Speaker 4: named who did get your partisan for supporting performance?
Speaker 2: Man?
Speaker 3: I wish I had even entertained the notion of going
Speaker 3: with a quote unquote performance in a documentary. I just
Speaker 3: immediately I immediately set that aside. But in terms of riveting
Speaker 3: figures from this marathon, oh yeah, certainly this hour on
Speaker 3: the Pity had you know a number of them. No,
Speaker 3: I went to a more traditional route, and I'm going
Speaker 3: to give you an honorable mention and a winner. Here.
Speaker 3: The honorable mention the close runner up, Marcel Bozoufi as
Speaker 3: vago in Z. We did spend a fair amount of
Speaker 3: time trying to figure that guy out. I feel like
Speaker 3: a little bit this was the dim bulb predator who
Speaker 3: was manipulated essentially into being muscle for the military regime.
Speaker 3: And yeah, we tried to dig into his psychology and
Speaker 3: what he was really after. And I think that all
Speaker 3: speaks to the strength of the performance, the slipperiness of
Speaker 3: that disturbing performance that Bozoufi gave. So my runner up
Speaker 3: slot goes to him. But the winner does come from
Speaker 3: the circle at a maybe recency bias. This is Miriam
Speaker 3: Parvin Almani, who plays our Zoo and I described her
Speaker 3: as sort of the feisty one. We meet her fairly
Speaker 3: early on, one of the three women we meet after
Speaker 3: that first handoff, so they're on the sidewalk outside that
Speaker 3: maternity ward, and she's the one of the three who
Speaker 3: some men walk by say something. Not sure if we
Speaker 3: even catch or if the subtitles let us know what
Speaker 3: the men say, but she's not having any of it
Speaker 3: and follows them down the block to give them a
Speaker 3: piece of her mind. That moment is contrasted with a
Speaker 3: moment we didn't touch on where Narjes, the younger woman
Speaker 3: of the three, who feels, to me felt like the
Speaker 3: most vulnerable of them. She they had plans to go
Speaker 3: on a bus together to get out of Tehran and
Speaker 3: find you know, I think they describe it as their
Speaker 3: fantasy or their paradise. And at the last moment, our
Speaker 3: Zoo tells now just that she's going to go alone
Speaker 3: and for a variety of reasons, but sacrifice is an
Speaker 3: element of it too, We get a sense. And so
Speaker 3: I like that balance where this character. Almani's performance captures
Speaker 3: the fieriness, the sacrificial nature, and I just also like
Speaker 3: you feel in the performance that she knows Ara Zoo
Speaker 3: knows that result of that fiery nature within her, but
Speaker 3: it's her nature and it just comes out anyway. And
Speaker 3: so among all of the you know, fascinating women characters,
Speaker 3: we meet in the circle. I think I was most
Speaker 3: gripped by the performance.
Speaker 4: ALMANI gives great choice, and I'm going to go right
Speaker 4: from such a humane performance to an absolutely inhumane one.
Speaker 4: It was between the two villains. For me, I had
Speaker 4: as my runner up as well, Marcel Bozoofi as Vogo. Okay,
Speaker 4: but it's Henry Daniel as Garbage in The Great Dictator
Speaker 4: that is so ultimately memorable for me. You can say
Speaker 4: the performance is one note it is. You can say
Speaker 4: it's too drolly, cartoonish perhaps, though of course, in both
Speaker 4: cases it is precisely what this movie calls for.
Speaker 2: This man Apoloni is aggressive, dominating before we make our
Speaker 2: demands with us put him in his place. Perhaps that
Speaker 2: means of applied psychology, in other words, that making him
Speaker 2: feel inferior. This can be done in many subtle ways.
Speaker 2: For instance, at this interview, I have so arranged that
Speaker 2: he will always be looking up at you, you looking
Speaker 2: down at him. At all times. His position will be inferior.
Speaker 1: Excellent.
Speaker 4: It's it's inhuman. It is drained of any sense of compassion,
Speaker 4: of empathy, of life. There is not even in him
Speaker 4: a sense of rage. Josh. It's not as if this character,
Speaker 4: it seems, is driven by anything. This is the Secretary
Speaker 4: of the Interior and Minister of Propaganda, essentially Gerbels right
Speaker 4: under Hitler. It it just I want to call it
Speaker 4: it not him, because that's it behaves like a machine
Speaker 4: almost it has it has a directive, and there is
Speaker 4: no humanity to this character whatsoever. As a reminder why
Speaker 4: we're why we're doing this marathon too, we got off
Speaker 4: to a great, if daunting start with this movie and
Speaker 4: with this character, because this character is as I was describing,
Speaker 4: so banal I did invoke the the vampiric visage of
Speaker 4: Steven Miller, wondering if if he perhaps saw this movie
Speaker 4: did not pay attention to any of the other scenes
Speaker 4: except his, and took took extensive notes and said, hey,
Speaker 4: that looks great. I can emulate that this guy's the hero.
Speaker 4: The guy, this guy's the hero. Garbage is the hero
Speaker 4: of this movie. And when you look at it that way,
Speaker 4: it's it's not so cartoonish. That's that's who I'm going with.
Speaker 4: Henry Daniel's garbage.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, garbage is is scary and that's nothing. That's
Speaker 3: not something you say of Chaplain's Hinkle right, the Great
Speaker 3: Dictator himself purposely, this is how they're designed. But I
Speaker 3: think the movie does need, even though it's obviously a comedy,
Speaker 3: that threatening presence as well, you know, eerily calmly threatening presence,
Speaker 3: which is absolutely what Daniel brings.
Speaker 4: We move on to our next partisan four lead performance.
Speaker 4: The Great Dictator does have Charles Chaplin, who was nominated
Speaker 4: for Best Actor Dual Performance as the barber, and Hinkle
Speaker 4: the Dictator of Tomania. Paulette Goddard may be supporting, but
Speaker 4: I think you could put her as Hannah in the
Speaker 4: lead performance category. Rome Open City has Anna Maniani as
Speaker 4: Pina and Aldo Fobrezi as Don Pietro Pellegrini. No regrets
Speaker 4: for our youth, said Sukohara as Yuki Yagahara. In z
Speaker 4: we have Eve Montant as the deputy who is assassinated,
Speaker 4: Jean Louis Trennan as the examining magistrate. No, there's no
Speaker 4: lead characters in The Sorrow and the pity will stick
Speaker 4: with that unless you want to call Marcel Ofls the
Speaker 4: lead character is the director of the film. Finally, in
Speaker 4: the Circle, I think perhaps we could say that in
Speaker 4: our guests Mami Zada as an our guest, is the
Speaker 4: lead in that ensemble film, Josh, who did you give
Speaker 4: your award to?
Speaker 3: I couldn't separate or choose between Anamagnani and Aldo Fabrizi
Speaker 3: in Rome Open City, so I'm afraid they have to
Speaker 3: share my honorable mention Slot. I think what they bring
Speaker 3: here is an experienced sense of conviction as experienced actors.
Speaker 3: You know, there are many novice actors in this film,
Speaker 3: part of the verte element here. And then you get
Speaker 3: Manyani and Fabrezi, who one of them is quiet in
Speaker 3: their performance, one of them is quite loud. These characters
Speaker 3: both surreptitiously aiding that resistance movement, the Partisans, but they
Speaker 3: absolutely have their own distinct emotional power to the roles.
Speaker 3: And yeah, they're the faces I think of when I
Speaker 3: think of Rome Open City. Both of them my winner,
Speaker 3: though to me there was no doubt about it. It
Speaker 3: was satsuk Ohara as Yuki in no regrets for our youth.
Speaker 3: I just think this is a showcase for her talents,
Speaker 3: even though as we discussed, she was just getting started.
Speaker 3: It would be later that she would make her Noriko
Speaker 3: trilogy with director Yasujuro Ozu, and here she's playing a
Speaker 3: similarly a somewhat similar character, a single woman who's gently
Speaker 3: pushing back against the expectations of Japanese society. What I
Speaker 3: love about the performance here, especially in the context of
Speaker 3: those later ones, is you see Yuki maturing into just
Speaker 3: that sort of woman across the course of this story.
Speaker 3: I think of the first scene, or one of the
Speaker 3: early scenes we see here where she's out on that
Speaker 3: hike with the other students, her father students, and they're
Speaker 3: at the top of this mountain and they hear the
Speaker 3: guns going off and it's practicing, you know, the military practice,
Speaker 3: and she says, I love that sound, and we get
Speaker 3: a sense it's she's all in on the patriotism at
Speaker 3: this point, right, the militarism, and Satsukohara is all in
Speaker 3: on that depiction of the character as well. We get
Speaker 3: a variation of that a little later, where her father's
Speaker 3: students are getting to political talk and she just says,
Speaker 3: I'd rather listen to music. But then we get that
Speaker 3: scene we spend time on where she's arranging traditional flowers
Speaker 3: and tears them apart and just says, this isn't me.
Speaker 3: And we see the identity starting to form there. Eventually
Speaker 3: we hear her say something like I'm just so disgusted
Speaker 3: with everything She's her eyes have become open to what's
Speaker 3: happened to her country. And despite some of that dialogue
Speaker 3: that I quoted, you know, so much of this is
Speaker 3: done by silent film acting. We also mention this adam
Speaker 3: the elements of no Regrets for a youth that recall
Speaker 3: silent film techniques, and Harro gets all sorts of almost
Speaker 3: dry esque Joan of Arc portrait shots here from Kurrasawa.
Speaker 3: I also think of the mug shot, which is, you know,
Speaker 3: kind of a startling technique for a movie from this era,
Speaker 3: where we see her just in profile and looking forward,
Speaker 3: but exactly as you would in a mug shot. There's
Speaker 3: a moment where she gets dizzy on the stairs and
Speaker 3: we get a woozy close up. So Hara is just
Speaker 3: doing basically everything you can do in front of a camera,
Speaker 3: whatever era you're working in, She's doing it here and
Speaker 3: doing it beautifully. So she was my pick for us
Speaker 3: lead performance.
Speaker 4: I did mention Paulette Goddard as Hannah and the Great Dictator,
Speaker 4: and I really do respect that performance. And this is
Speaker 4: such a loaded category that she can't rate any higher
Speaker 4: than fifth here, because you've got at minimum the two
Speaker 4: performances you singled out, first Annamanyani and Aldo Fabreezi giving
Speaker 4: two of the most heart wrenching performances in cinema history.
Speaker 4: And then the person I'm giving runner up to, I'm
Speaker 4: going back to the great dictator. I'm in on Charles
Speaker 4: Chaplin giving that dual performance despite perhaps all the speechifying
Speaker 4: and some sentimentalism. I think that this is a difficult performance, Josh,
Speaker 4: because not only do we see two vastly different versions
Speaker 4: of Chaplain here and a side of him we had
Speaker 4: never seen up to that point. But for me, one
Speaker 4: of the faces of this marathon is when we talked
Speaker 4: about and it's it's when Pinkele turns to the camera
Speaker 4: with the ferocity and the rage and the snartling teeth
Speaker 4: talking about the.
Speaker 1: Juden no Chudin with a chuldin kind of a bush.
Speaker 4: That's legitimately terrifying, and for Charles Chaplin, the little tramp,
Speaker 4: to pull that off, I can't imagine what that was
Speaker 4: like for audiences at the time. But also seeing that
Speaker 4: on the big screen, that that's part of it. Then
Speaker 4: there's the physicality. We may talk about at least one
Speaker 4: other scene a bit later. There's the physicality to the
Speaker 4: performance as well in some of the comedic bits that
Speaker 4: I think elevated to at least run her up status.
Speaker 4: But I'm with you. I did go with Susukahara as
Speaker 4: well in No Regrets for Our Youth. And part of it,
Speaker 4: perhaps as well, is that, unlike Manyani, this is just
Speaker 4: based on what happens to her character, she does own
Speaker 4: the movie. This is her film, and you said it.
Speaker 4: She's best known for her collaborations with Tho Zoo. She
Speaker 4: only made two films with Kurosawa. The other one was
Speaker 4: The Idiot, and this is the only one that Kusahwa
Speaker 4: did with a female lead. And this movie is certainly
Speaker 4: good enough, and Horra is certainly good enough that you
Speaker 4: wish that wasn't the case. You described it so well.
Speaker 4: I don't know that I can I can say anything better,
Speaker 4: But it is such a huge arc that this movie
Speaker 4: covers with that character, going from this naive young woman
Speaker 4: who isn't it all interested in getting involved in politics
Speaker 4: to a much more mature woman who has experienced real
Speaker 4: suffering and now chosen to become more politically active, and
Speaker 4: she does play at all, I think with such subtle force.
Speaker 4: And I found film comment commented on her performance. I'm
Speaker 4: going to read a quick part of this. The actress
Speaker 4: plays every step of her evolution in such a straightforward
Speaker 4: manner that even her ever changing hairstyle works towards this end,
Speaker 4: no matter what external appearance she bears. Horra's greatness is
Speaker 4: her ability to project an inner self that prevented her
Speaker 4: from wearing those styles as if she were at a
Speaker 4: costume party. And I don't know if we got into
Speaker 4: it or not, but it was in my notes that
Speaker 4: the scene where and it's a famous scene that may
Speaker 4: come up or not, where she goes to work in
Speaker 4: the rice fields and is determined to work with the
Speaker 4: with the in laws. What does she do? She puts
Speaker 4: she puts her hair up, and that low angle shot
Speaker 4: that Krosawa captures that with it's such force. That's that's
Speaker 4: a bit of silent film acting. Even there, it seems
Speaker 4: like right where the camera and and just the the
Speaker 4: physical part of that, that gesture with her hair is
Speaker 4: doing all the work saying everything about the character that
Speaker 4: we need it to. And and she she becomes an
Speaker 4: entirely different type of worker and person in in that sequence.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I like the phrase subtle force because yes, she's
Speaker 3: not doing she's not pushing anything too hard, yet somehow
Speaker 3: registers so strongly across the whole stretch of this movie.
Speaker 4: So we always hand out an award. We have three
Speaker 4: more categories. We have best Scene, we have the scene
Speaker 4: that's unique to our marathon, we'll get into more detail
Speaker 4: about that in a second, And we have Best Picture.
Speaker 4: Sometimes I wonder whether or not it makes sense to
Speaker 4: do the best overall scene second, like we're building up
Speaker 4: to that. But I actually think, and this is usually
Speaker 4: what we do. I think the scene that's unique to
Speaker 4: the marathon makes a little more sense to build to
Speaker 4: to be the penultimate one before before the best Picture
Speaker 4: award is handed out. So what is the best scene
Speaker 4: for you and the marathon that isn't the dissident gesture
Speaker 4: that we'll get to here.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, I like that because my scene is a
Speaker 3: downer in my dissident gesture is a little more inspiring,
Speaker 3: So I like that.
Speaker 4: I'm definitely the opposite, actually the opposite. Both of mine
Speaker 4: are depressing as hell.
Speaker 3: Well you know that's yeah, that's reasonable. That's how things
Speaker 3: went a lot in this marathon. Well for seeing I'm
Speaker 3: going with I'll start with and maybe the downer of
Speaker 3: the marathon in terms of how the filmmaking just punches
Speaker 3: you in the gut, and that's the murder of Pina
Speaker 3: from Rome Open City. We did spend some time with this,
Speaker 3: but she protesting Francesco being arrested, the soldiers shooting her,
Speaker 3: and we witnessed this from the back of the truck
Speaker 3: where he's been thrown in pulling away, and it's just yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean, you could go you could go back to
Speaker 3: our conversation and we describe just why that works so powerfully.
Speaker 3: But that one an honorable mention for me. And another
Speaker 3: one I'm going back to the circle from just last week,
Speaker 3: and it is completing the circle that finale, which, as
Speaker 3: you said, had had riches beyond the ones we spent
Speaker 3: a long time discussing that you track down later. So
Speaker 3: those are my honorable mentions. The winner for me, it's
Speaker 3: a bit of a wonky one as opposed to the
Speaker 3: emotionality of those two honorable mentions, but I really love
Speaker 3: the meta nature, the ingenious quality of it, even with
Speaker 3: the context of you know, a very political film, and
Speaker 3: it is the fantasy finale of accountability in z This
Speaker 3: is where we think we're getting a happy ending. We
Speaker 3: think that these the military regime, these perpetrators of the
Speaker 3: political violence. We see them being indicted, and we think,
Speaker 3: especially if you don't know, you know, the Greek history,
Speaker 3: the recent Greek history, that this is drawing from this
Speaker 3: account maybe maybe this is maybe they actually the bad
Speaker 3: guys were actually held accountable. And then the movie pulls
Speaker 3: the rug out from under us reveals what happened in
Speaker 3: real life, that these figures were exonerated back in power
Speaker 3: and things got even worse. Doing this via that news
Speaker 3: report that Costa Gavras stages and detailing all of this,
Speaker 3: it made it. It gave it a level of realism
Speaker 3: and echoed how this might go down in our own
Speaker 3: world in a way that was inventive and jarring and unsettling.
Speaker 3: And I just I think that's my scene because it's
Speaker 3: it's it's somewhat on the level of something Panahi from
Speaker 3: the Circle might sure pull off. You know, this this
Speaker 3: melding of real world techniques and that it was happening
Speaker 3: how many years earlier, you know, I appreciate as well.
Speaker 3: So that's my pick for best scene. I'm going with
Speaker 3: Z's fantasy finale of accountability. Josh.
Speaker 4: I thought I was being so clever coming up with
Speaker 4: this one, and it's genuinely my pick. But as it
Speaker 4: turns out, this and I have a slight variation on it.
Speaker 4: This choice is my dissident gesture. So I'm gonna jump
Speaker 4: ahead to my Wow. Yes, okay, I'm viewing it slightly
Speaker 4: differently here. Yeah, it does right. It's the opening title card, yeah,
Speaker 4: plus the PostScript in Z, the active defiance. The active
Speaker 4: defiance here is committed by the filmmaker himself. It's Costa
Speaker 4: Gavras telling us right from the jump, that brilliant opening
Speaker 4: title card. Any similarity to actual events or person's living
Speaker 4: or dead is not coincidental. We've seen it a million times.
Speaker 4: Audiences even then had surely seen it a million times,
Speaker 4: accepted it said, is coincidental. This says, is not coincidental,
Speaker 4: and then it adds it is intentional signaling to you
Speaker 4: as a viewer, do not get comfortable, do not get complacent.
Speaker 4: This film is going to be a reckoning. This is
Speaker 4: going to be a denunciation. And then the PostScript you
Speaker 4: just described where this film seems like everything comes together
Speaker 4: so neatly. It feels it does. We talked about it. It
Speaker 4: feels like a fantasy. You want to believe that life
Speaker 4: works like this, that maybe at one time life worked
Speaker 4: like this, or maybe another in another time and place,
Speaker 4: life worked like this, and and could we have that
Speaker 4: happen in this time and place, and that it turns
Speaker 4: out no, it didn't even happen in this time and place.
Speaker 4: And we do get this element. You're right, it's it's
Speaker 4: a meta sort of panahi like nod where we get
Speaker 4: a newscast that that makes it feel real, gives it
Speaker 4: that element of a docudrama, even though we do realize
Speaker 4: at some point that this this isn't a real newscast.
Speaker 4: It's the it's the photographer character, and this rustcast is
Speaker 4: being broadcast for for one audience, us as the audience.
Speaker 4: Just like he was speaking to us at the beginning,
Speaker 4: he is speaking directly to us now. And we find
Speaker 4: out that after this, this this joyous verdict and things
Speaker 4: coming out how it should have come out with justice,
Speaker 4: things only got worse. More liberties, more freedoms were taken away,
Speaker 4: and expression freedom of expression was clamped down on even further.
Speaker 4: That ending is so brilliant. It leaves you it it does,
Speaker 4: it does send you out of the out of the
Speaker 4: theater feeling infuriated, but hopefully also feeling committed. And I
Speaker 4: think in that way. I think in that way it is.
Speaker 4: It is a dissident gesture, and that's why I chose
Speaker 4: it there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, No, I like that. We probably should have spent
Speaker 3: a little more time defining, like how are we going
Speaker 3: to consider something a scene as opposed to a gesture?
Speaker 3: But it absolutely fits. It absolutely captures the idea of
Speaker 3: what we're looking for and doesn't remind me. Now, I
Speaker 3: didn't rewatch it before putting together these notes. But doesn't
Speaker 3: it sort of climax with that photojournalist turned news anchor.
Speaker 3: Then all of a sudden there's a report of him
Speaker 3: being arrested as well, right, isn't that like sort of Yeah,
Speaker 3: so it just builds the paranoia like builds builds builds,
Speaker 3: and then but I like, I do. I really like
Speaker 3: what you said about it being both disturbing and somehow
Speaker 3: makes you feel committed. I want to come back to
Speaker 3: that maybe with some of the other picks we're going
Speaker 3: to make But yeah, I think you're right about how
Speaker 3: that takes place within this particular scene or gesture too.
Speaker 4: Okay, then let's get to your pick for dissident gesture.
Speaker 3: Okay, let me give you I did have a couple
Speaker 3: of honorable mentions, So let me do that real quick first.
Speaker 3: And and this comes from when the first one comes
Speaker 3: from Rome Open City. It's the Parish Boys whistling mourning
Speaker 3: in Florence before Don Pietro is executed, briefly, briefly heartening him.
Speaker 3: That's a great one, like the Partisan Boys. And also
Speaker 3: this is when we spent time on just last week
Speaker 3: from the Circle. The sex worker who's been arrested, throws
Speaker 3: thrown in the prison bus, starts to cigarette, is told no.
Speaker 3: A few moments later, the men in the bus light
Speaker 3: a cigarette, and so she takes that as her opportunity
Speaker 3: to I am going to light this cigarette. Very small,
Speaker 3: very small, but I think in the context of what
Speaker 3: we've seen in Iran at that time, that's a dissident
Speaker 3: gesture to light your cigarette, especially as we talked about
Speaker 3: the recurring motif throughout the movie of the other women
Speaker 3: attempting to have a cigarette and continually being frustrated not
Speaker 3: able to my disident gesture though, is even smaller, and
Speaker 3: this did come up in our discussion of no Regrets
Speaker 3: for our Youth, But I remember noting it, and I
Speaker 3: didn't know why I noted it, because it's a brief scene,
Speaker 3: a very brief gesture. But I found some encouragement and
Speaker 3: maybe even commitment to go back to your word in it.
Speaker 3: There's the moment about maybe a third of the way
Speaker 3: in where the students of Yuki's father have begun to
Speaker 3: organize and they want to protest what's happening on their campus,
Speaker 3: the moves of the government and so forth, and so
Speaker 3: they're having this late night meeting. I forget if they're
Speaker 3: making posters or making plans something like that, and all
Speaker 3: of a sudden the janitor comes in, and this is
Speaker 3: late at night, and he just gives provides them snacks,
Speaker 3: and there was something someone comments about it. I forget
Speaker 3: if they say like, why are you still here or
Speaker 3: you know, you know, we don't need this place cleaned
Speaker 3: up something like. Someone kind of questions him, and he
Speaker 3: just is like, well, this is what I can do.
Speaker 3: So in that brief moment, you get a sense that
Speaker 3: I don't know if we see that character ever again
Speaker 3: in the movie or if we saw him previously, but
Speaker 3: something just kind of lodged with me about this is
Speaker 3: a guy who knew what they were up to, knew
Speaker 3: his limitations, probably for his job, his place in society,
Speaker 3: but had his convictions and thought, you know what I
Speaker 3: can do. I can bring these kids snacks while they're
Speaker 3: planning how to actually go out and do the more,
Speaker 3: you know, on the ground work. And I thought, disidant
Speaker 3: gestures kind of look like that too. You know you
Speaker 3: need those gestures too, So not the biggest one of
Speaker 3: the marathon, but still one that I'm going to give
Speaker 3: my award to.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I like it, and it seems it seems intimate,
Speaker 4: it seems small if we really are taking gesture as
Speaker 4: it seems you did for these purposes literally, I like
Speaker 4: And it is a scene that does stand out in
Speaker 4: that movie because you know that Kurosawa isn't going to
Speaker 4: put a moment like that in there for nothing. It
Speaker 4: is it is one you you recognize that has some
Speaker 4: potency to transition. Back to my best scene, I do
Speaker 4: want to mention my runner up or dissident gesture, and
Speaker 4: it's the scene and really the shot where the Rebel
Speaker 4: boys set off a bomb in Rome open scene. It's
Speaker 4: that it's that moment when they they come flying over
Speaker 4: the hill or or whatever, that is where we get
Speaker 4: that what I call the one battle after another moment.
Speaker 4: I think it's the shot that PTA consciously or unconsciously
Speaker 4: paid homage to of the skateboarders and as they emerge
Speaker 4: out of the smoke, and that that of course is
Speaker 4: a very big dissident gesture, but nevertheless one where we
Speaker 4: don't know at that point in the movie if I
Speaker 4: remember correctly, that all those boys are partisans, that those
Speaker 4: boys are actively part of the resistance. But we know
Speaker 4: it the second we hear that bomb go off and
Speaker 4: they emerge out of that smoke, and it is such
Speaker 4: a beautifully composed shot. Back to best scene, I do
Speaker 4: want to give some love. This is one where I'll
Speaker 4: mention if you just a couple other scenes before I
Speaker 4: get to my picks. In The Great Dictator, we have
Speaker 4: that globe dance that I think is so good, is
Speaker 4: really really something right? Actually, that's it is. It's my
Speaker 4: runner up now that I look at it's my runner
Speaker 4: up because the way he scampers around that room, the
Speaker 4: way he scampers up the curtain glides down it, the
Speaker 4: way he dances with that that globe balloon, perfectly in
Speaker 4: sync to Wagner. And it's just this this jextaposition of
Speaker 4: beauty and and and gracefulness. And also it shows you
Speaker 4: everything you need to know about the despicable mind of
Speaker 4: this fascist that this is. This is his vision of
Speaker 4: total world domination.
Speaker 3: That's it. Yeah, it works as chaplain esque, you know,
Speaker 3: physical comedy, but there's political potency as well. It's deflating,
Speaker 3: it's deflating, like this notion of war mongering, which is
Speaker 3: really this guy's childish whim, right, and as we've seen,
Speaker 3: these whims seem to be thrown about even today to
Speaker 3: horrifying results. But it appears like to the people calling
Speaker 3: the shots, this is what they This is how much
Speaker 3: investment they put in it. They're just playing a game,
Speaker 3: a silly game. So yeah, it's a delightful bit of
Speaker 3: comedy that has a lot going on underneath.
Speaker 4: But then following it, if I remember right, you've got
Speaker 4: the barbershop scene with his other character in the Hungarian Dance,
Speaker 4: which is genuinely lovely in z. The assassination scene is
Speaker 4: quite a sequence, and the way we see that from
Speaker 4: various angles, the sorrow and the pity. We spent some
Speaker 4: time on Christian de la Massier. There are so many
Speaker 4: moments with that character, but really the one where he explicitly,
Speaker 4: so casually defends his collaboration with the nazis just unrepentantly
Speaker 4: and the circle. I like that you tied in completing
Speaker 4: the circle. I did think about that, but I will
Speaker 4: be honest and say that I wrote down just the
Speaker 4: opening hospital sequence that alone is enough for me to
Speaker 4: be a best scene contender. But I'm going with the
Speaker 4: obvious choice here, and that's how it works.
Speaker 3: Sometimes.
Speaker 4: Sometimes the obvious choice, certainly for me, is the right one.
Speaker 4: It's Pena's death from Rome Open City, and you certainly
Speaker 4: could call it a dissident gesture. Wouldn't be a great candidate,
Speaker 4: perhaps for best scene of the Marathon if it didn't
Speaker 4: encompass that in some way. But it doesn't begin that way,
Speaker 4: nor is it really intended, I think, to be an
Speaker 4: act of defiance. She is simply chasing after the man
Speaker 4: she loves, who is being taken away for no good reason.
Speaker 4: The man she is supposed to marry. This is an
Speaker 4: act of love, is what this is. And yes she
Speaker 4: has just wrenched herself away from the Nazis, but that's
Speaker 4: what it is. And here with Rosselini, you have every
Speaker 4: kind of cinematic approach that he is harnessing in this
Speaker 4: film to such great effect is on display, from still
Speaker 4: composed shots to dolly shots and following following her as
Speaker 4: she runs to her coming towards the camera, but the
Speaker 4: the camera is pulling away from her. Two shots, single shots,
Speaker 4: you name it, it it, it's all being used to
Speaker 4: such great effect. And you have handheld as well. There
Speaker 4: is a reason why. And then at the end Don
Speaker 4: Pietro holding her and evoking the Pietra there's a reason
Speaker 4: why this is. This is iconic. I do think, Josh,
Speaker 4: if you were making a poster, and when I say you,
Speaker 4: I don't mean just me, I'm going to speculate that
Speaker 4: you might do it as well. I'm going to speculate
Speaker 4: that if we pulled one hundred people listening who had
Speaker 4: watched all of these films, and you said you have
Speaker 4: to pick, you have to make a poster for this marathon,
Speaker 4: and you can only pick one image from one film.
Speaker 4: I think it's possible Pena running towards the truck, Pena
Speaker 4: getting gunned down is the image. I think it's the
Speaker 4: iconic image of defiance. Ultimately that speaks to the what
Speaker 4: we're trying to explore in this marathon, the oppression and
Speaker 4: injustice in this marathon. I think that's it and that's
Speaker 4: why I picked it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the filmmaking is why it's a scene of the
Speaker 3: marathon candidate. You know, as you described all the elements
Speaker 3: it took to pull that off, including in the conditions
Speaker 3: this film was made. You know, we talked about that
Speaker 3: a little bit. Is this was in some sense a
Speaker 3: gorilla effort, and to be able within that context provide
Speaker 3: something so precisely staged, filmed, and then edited is quite
Speaker 3: a feat. So yeah, definitely why it was an honorable
Speaker 3: mention for me, and totally get why it was the
Speaker 3: winner for you.
Speaker 4: So we are at best Picture. Certainly sounds like it
Speaker 4: could be a difficult choice for the both of us
Speaker 4: considering the quality of films in this marathon. Institutes from Josh,
Speaker 4: where did you go?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 3: A lot of times with these Marathon award shows, it
Speaker 3: becomes obvious as we go on like, oh, this one's
Speaker 3: been mentioned alive, this one's been mentioned a lot. It's
Speaker 3: probably going to be Adam's best picture or Josh's best picture.
Speaker 3: In this case, it's one that's hardly come up. My
Speaker 3: winner is The Sorrow and the Pity. And I don't know, man,
Speaker 3: I just maybe I'm influenced by the fact that this
Speaker 3: one applied I felt the most to our current situation
Speaker 3: in the United States. As I was watching it, I
Speaker 3: just kind of like, I kept tensing up more and more,
Speaker 3: and yes, I think this is what over four hours, right,
Speaker 3: four and a half hours? Yes, so I was pretty
Speaker 3: tense at the end. A document of France occupied by
Speaker 3: Nazi Germany. But all the dynamics I saw at play
Speaker 3: reiterated the reality that you know, United States is occupied
Speaker 3: from the inside, just forces ignored in the constitution, bending
Speaker 3: breaking laws, regulations, blatantly disobeying international law. And why does
Speaker 3: that make it the film of the marathon for me?
Speaker 3: Because I think it connected most to why we want
Speaker 3: to do this marathon is try to wrap our heads
Speaker 3: around what's happening. And not only is The Sorrow and
Speaker 3: the Pity intricately constructed and needs all of those four
Speaker 3: and a half hours in ways that we discussed, but
Speaker 3: it was revelatory in that sense of how this can
Speaker 3: happen so quickly to countries that otherwise you would think
Speaker 3: would have different values. And related to that is the question,
Speaker 3: you know, as I was clenched up at the end,
Speaker 3: so what are we going to do?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 3: And it struck me that Sorrow and the Pity is
Speaker 3: a wake up call to anyone who thinks they can
Speaker 3: ride out humanity's worst impulses. If you think you can
Speaker 3: just look the other way about your day. You know,
Speaker 3: that movie documented how the people who chose to do
Speaker 3: it that way, they're living in a different reality and
Speaker 3: in the moment and for the rest of their lives.
Speaker 3: And so dissonance of some kind is going to be
Speaker 3: required for the country, for your neighbors, for your own conscience. Really,
Speaker 3: I think of that phrase at times like these, you
Speaker 3: really see people's character, you know. One of the interviewees
Speaker 3: says that, so Ofal's document, it was just it's crucial.
Speaker 3: It was crucial and its time and place. We talked
Speaker 3: about that, right, it's like what it meant to France
Speaker 3: at the time of its release. Sadly still crucial, So
Speaker 3: I'm going to make it my pick just for its
Speaker 3: effect on me and its lasting relevance.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it's a wonderful choice because I strongly
Speaker 4: considered it and it's my runner up. It is my
Speaker 4: number two film from the marathon, And to your point
Speaker 4: about it's relevance, and I think we we did manage
Speaker 4: to find relevance to our current day situation without straining
Speaker 4: at all in every single film that we talked about
Speaker 4: in this marathon, but this one, The Sorrow and the
Speaker 4: Pity is the movie that forced the toughest questions and
Speaker 4: it made me think about the most questions. The one
Speaker 4: that I saw we spent time on this, but the
Speaker 4: one I saw in my notes as I was refreshing
Speaker 4: my memory today, the one that lingers with me the
Speaker 4: most from my notes as I watched this film, is
Speaker 4: am I wrong to feel like our collaborators need to
Speaker 4: be punished? Speaking to exactly what you said about being
Speaker 4: occupied from the inside, That's how I felt too watching
Speaker 4: this film. That's what I was thinking about, And so
Speaker 4: I think we have collaborators similar to some of the
Speaker 4: French people, the French resistance people felt in this movie. Otherwise,
Speaker 4: I'm not comparing myself to those French resistance fighters at all,
Speaker 4: other other than that that feeling. And you can take
Speaker 4: the word punished there. Punished is doing a lot of work,
Speaker 4: because you can take punished there to mean according to
Speaker 4: the letter of the law and simply want what should
Speaker 4: be coming to some of them for violating our constitution,
Speaker 4: for breaking the law, and you hope that things are
Speaker 4: set right, or you can take it to mean something
Speaker 4: that is coming from a place within me and probably
Speaker 4: others that is seeking more retribution because which.
Speaker 3: We save the documentary Rhich, we also see.
Speaker 4: In the documentary exactly. Yeah, so that's why it's my
Speaker 4: it's my runner up. But as you maybe have been
Speaker 4: able to predict from at least my last choice, can
Speaker 4: I guess you can guess?
Speaker 3: Okay, I feel I feel like it's Rome Open City.
Speaker 3: But part of me also feels like you've mentioned the Dictator,
Speaker 3: the Great Dictator way more than I have, even though
Speaker 3: I enjoyed it quite a bit. But then I expect
Speaker 3: it is it the Great Dictator? No, it's not. Okay.
Speaker 4: I I did enjoy The Great Dictator this time around,
Speaker 4: more than maybe I expected to, But okay, and I
Speaker 4: do think it's a very good film. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 4: know where I would I don't know where I would
Speaker 4: rank it. I haven't ranked the films of this marathon.
Speaker 4: I do know that The Sorrow and the Pity is
Speaker 4: number two, and I know that Rome Open City, Okay,
Speaker 4: is the I was going to say the essential, but
Speaker 4: I think The Sorrow and the Pity is also essential.
Speaker 4: It's my favorite. Rome Open City is my favorite film.
Speaker 4: I said that z created the blueprint for the modern
Speaker 4: political thriller. I'm not the only one who has suggested
Speaker 4: something like that. This, this film, Rome Open City created
Speaker 4: the blueprint for modern resistance cinema. You can trace the
Speaker 4: exact line from one battle after another to the Battle
Speaker 4: of Algiers back to Rossolini and this film. We were
Speaker 4: talking about the different techniques employed just in that one sequence,
Speaker 4: Pina's death. This is a movie that somehow works so
Speaker 4: incredibly and it's part melo drama, it's part suspense drama,
Speaker 4: it's pseudo documentary newsreel type approach, and it's all combined
Speaker 4: with the neo realist approach at times. And you have,
Speaker 4: as we've touched on, two of the best characters and
Speaker 4: performances we saw in this marathon, in Manyani's Pena and
Speaker 4: Fabrizi's Don Pellegrini. I already mentioned two of the most
Speaker 4: memorable scenes, Pina's death and the rebel boys. You also
Speaker 4: singled out the ending and the boys whistling. We could
Speaker 4: probably highlight others. You have a non believer, I found
Speaker 4: out later in Rossolini, who makes a profound movie. I
Speaker 4: think about faith, which is another fascinating angle on this film,
Speaker 4: and you alluded to this earlier. Another thing that makes
Speaker 4: this film so remarkable is its perspective, despite the proximity
Speaker 4: to the events, to the oppression that it is depicting.
Speaker 4: It's said in nineteen forty four shooting in early nineteen
Speaker 4: forty five, the war isn't even over yet. This is
Speaker 4: completely fresh. Only Rome has been liberated, so the Germans
Speaker 4: just got out of town. And here's Rossolini saying, now
Speaker 4: I'm going to render this experience on screen, and the
Speaker 4: buildings the backdrop is the backdrop. That's why it feels
Speaker 4: neo realist because he doesn't have to fabricate anything. There's
Speaker 4: there's no production design really needed, certainly in the streets
Speaker 4: of Rome, because the.
Speaker 3: Backdrop is there.
Speaker 4: The city experienced it, the people experienced it, and I
Speaker 4: think Rome Open City is is an achievement. That's why
Speaker 4: it's my favorite film of the marathon. It's getting my
Speaker 4: partisan convincing.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna make it my honorable mention. I didn't really
Speaker 3: have one, but yeah, if I did that ranking too,
Speaker 3: I think that's where I would land, We'd we'd be
Speaker 3: flip flopped. I'd have sorrow and the pity as the best,
Speaker 3: and then Rome Open City just after that. I like, so,
Speaker 3: can I ask you? Can I ask you a question
Speaker 3: before we wrap up here that if it's easy. I
Speaker 3: don't know if it's easy. So, but it's been as
Speaker 3: I've been putting these notes together, I've been asking myself this,
Speaker 3: and I think I've meandered toward an answer. So I'll
Speaker 3: ask you, and I guess give mine and give you
Speaker 3: time to percolate on it. Do you feel better or
Speaker 3: worse about the state of America after doing this marathon?
Speaker 3: Because I think, as I said, one of the reasons
Speaker 3: we want to do it is just to try to
Speaker 3: make sense of what's happening here and get some historical context. Perhaps.
Speaker 3: I think also I was I was hoping to come
Speaker 3: out of it feeling one way or the other. And
Speaker 3: so I'm now that we're at the end. I guess
Speaker 3: I would say if you asked me that question, I
Speaker 3: would say encouraged. And I think I mean, we've witnessed
Speaker 3: how in these dramatizations and in one documentary, you know,
Speaker 3: the human spirit has weathered, survived, and in some cases
Speaker 3: pushed back against fascism, authoritarianism in the last you know,
Speaker 3: fifty eighty years that we've been we've been looking at
Speaker 3: in these movies, and there's something oddly maybe it's just
Speaker 3: like there's more people in the fox hole with us
Speaker 3: in a way historically that I find some encouragement, but
Speaker 3: just reminders were not the first to go through a
Speaker 3: variation of this. I don't know. I don't know. I
Speaker 3: don't have a response.
Speaker 4: It's a great question, and it's funny too, because we
Speaker 4: could spend a lot of time on this, and I
Speaker 4: don't want to at this point. But you look at
Speaker 4: the six films we watched, and if you do a
Speaker 4: quick snapshot, how many of them truly end with hope?
Speaker 4: How many of them?
Speaker 3: Know?
Speaker 4: How many of them truly end on a positive note?
Speaker 4: Even even something like The Great dictator of course ends
Speaker 4: with hope, because you've got this this great plea yeah,
Speaker 4: for love and compassion. Part of that, part of our
Speaker 4: response to it, might be that it just rings a
Speaker 4: little little false. But beyond that, we also we also
Speaker 4: have the fortunate benefit of hindsight, and we know that
Speaker 4: we know that that it that the call to action
Speaker 4: didn't work, and so there's that part of it as well.
Speaker 4: In some ways, you could say this marathon is more
Speaker 4: of a downer than one that would encourage us. But
Speaker 4: I think, Josh, I am, I'm with you, that that
Speaker 4: the scale is slightly tipped more towards encouragement, I could
Speaker 4: be a little more discouraged in some ways that I
Speaker 4: now I now see, of course we were both aware
Speaker 4: of this, but that I now see so many more
Speaker 4: examples of different people being oppressed in so many different ways,
Speaker 4: and all the different types of injustice, and how he
Speaker 4: learned horribly people are treated historically. Honestly, Yeah, I mean
Speaker 4: that that could that could dispirit you, certainly, And I
Speaker 4: felt that at times watching the marathon, but watching watching
Speaker 4: the resilience, watching the resilience, and you you made a
Speaker 4: great called action yourself. At one point watching this marathon.
Speaker 4: Was it during the Sorrow and the Pity? Was it
Speaker 4: during our conversation about that film, or was it early?
Speaker 4: I think it was the Sorrow and the Pity that
Speaker 4: I thought was that I thought was very convincing. And
Speaker 4: I think that I think that's because of the power
Speaker 4: of a of a film like that, and that that
Speaker 4: ultimately we see in people like the French, the French
Speaker 4: resistance fighters like you can't help but be emboldened by
Speaker 4: that and think, as you were saying Kenneth with think, well,
Speaker 4: then surely I can do something, Surely like I'm not
Speaker 4: I'm not having to sacrifice on the level of those guys.
Speaker 3: Surely I can.
Speaker 4: I can I can play some small part in that,
Speaker 4: in this, in what we're experiencing. And with that in mind,
Speaker 4: then I think, ultimately I'm I'm in a I'm in
Speaker 4: a better place than I was when it began.
Speaker 3: Okay, good, good. That to the reasons we're happy to
Speaker 3: have done this marathon. There you go.
Speaker 4: We encourage you to check out all of our marathons
Speaker 4: at filmspotting dot net slash marathons. You can get caught
Speaker 4: up on our conversations about all the films. If you
Speaker 4: missed any there, We will select our twenty twenty seven
Speaker 4: marathon topic later this year. Now, that is something that
Speaker 4: Film Spotting Advisory Board members get to weigh in on.
Speaker 4: They really get to shape the candidates, and then we
Speaker 4: let Film Spotting Family members vote on the final marathon.
Speaker 4: I think that's how we usually do it is the
Speaker 4: fab helps us whittle it down, we get finalists, the
Speaker 4: family pick. So if you want to help decide what
Speaker 4: our next marathon is going to be, what the content
Speaker 4: of this show is going to be, you can become
Speaker 4: a Film Spotting Family member. You can learn more at
Speaker 4: Filmspottingfamily dot com. Remember, we do have a promotion going
Speaker 4: on now where you can get twenty percent off any
Speaker 4: subscription that runs through this month. All you have to
Speaker 4: do is use the promo code Summer.
Speaker 3: Quick Reminder before we leave that we've got a lot
Speaker 3: coming your way. In the Film Spotting Feed on Monday
Speaker 3: is the Movie Racket with Michael Phillips. This time the
Speaker 3: subject the movie laws of book to film adaptations. Michaels
Speaker 3: Hiley is David Yeah no kidding. Kajanic. Kajanic is the
Speaker 3: screenwriter slash adapter of Luca Guaddanino's Suspiria Bones and All
Speaker 3: and a bigger splash. So look for the movie Racket
Speaker 3: on Monday. Then on Tuesday, we've got Film Spotting SVU
Speaker 3: coming your way. They'll be talking about Lewis Letterier's The
Speaker 3: Last House That One stars Greta Lee and Wagner Mora.
Speaker 3: It's available on Netflix. On Thursday. The Next Picture Show
Speaker 3: has part two of their latest pairing, the Anthony Boordain
Speaker 3: biopic Tony plus Pixar's Ratitudey Friday, we'll be back to
Speaker 3: discuss David Robert Mitchell's The End of Oak Street. I'll
Speaker 3: have a few words on Tony as well. For Films Spotting,
Speaker 3: I'm Josh Larson.
Speaker 4: And I met him Kempinar. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: This conversation can serve no purpose anymore.
Speaker 2: But Barne